


Up Looking Down; Down Looking Up

by drop_an_idea_on_a_page



Category: Justified
Genre: POV 1st Person Tim G., Post Season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4257525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drop_an_idea_on_a_page/pseuds/drop_an_idea_on_a_page
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving on and looking back. A story centered around Tim in the ten years following the series. (An extension, backward, of "A Long Climb Up".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another for the PDF requests. Here be angst; ye be warned. Star-crossed lovers, destructive friendship, a Mexican shoot out, a bar brawl, some people being nice and others being not very nice at all. A prequel to "A Long Climb Up".

* * *

These are familiar feelings – the ground beneath you gives way, gaping wide, and that hole is deep and dark, and you teeter briefly, lost, knowing there's nothing ahead of you but the fall, knowing nothing or nobody can fill that hole stretching below you fast enough or full enough to stop the pain when you hit bottom. And the bottom is waiting, jagged and hard, no comfort there, no comfort anywhere.

You wonder as you teeter if it's going to be worse this time, or better because you've had experience pulling yourself out of this pit. Whatever, it's all just as pointless; you feel just as helpless. Maybe the first time is worse because you're unprepared for how hard you hit bottom. But right now, right this moment, that's not much comfort, being aware of what's ahead. There's a blessing in not knowing, you think, and the pain already seems sharper, so maybe this time is worse because you know what's waiting, you feel the pain before it even hits you, and you know before you start your descent how hard it's going to be to climb out. The despair settles in early, while you're still teetering.

Thinking back, you realize how numb you were the first time compared to this, but the circumstances were completely different. That time it was your best friend, a casualty of war, expected but unexpected, and you were right there with him, a part of the accident of fate, not told about it after the fact as if it had nothing to do with you, when it's everything to you. You were there the first time and you saw it, so it's more real in a way. You piece it together later, everything that happened, scraping it out from your memory, tell it like it's somebody else it happened to. He goes down, you say to yourself when you want to think about it, one unlucky fucking bullet, and you see it in your periphery and it registers dully. But the enemy is still looking to get lucky with another bullet, so you focus on that, fire superiority, control the engagement, and then when there's time, when it's safe, then you go to him and you focus on the training and you try to stop the bleeding. When his heart stops, goes cold before the helo can get to you, yours goes cold too, somewhere a long way from home, a long way from sympathy. So, maybe that makes it easier – no pitying looks tearing at you, keeping the wounds fresh. You don't feel it till later. It trickles in after the rush and then the sudden stop, after when the world starts turning again, on leave or drinking with the rest of the guys, well, the rest except one.

ASAP – Army Substance Abuse Program – that was the ladder out of that hole, that time. Your PL, your platoon leader, he comes to you and says, "Sergeant, they want you in the sniper platoon, but you've got to get your drinking under control. Can you do that? We'll give you one shot at it." And that's your motivation to climb out of the pit.

But where's my motivation now? The bottom is rushing up at me, past the teetering stage and falling fast. Where's my ladder this time? I can't get on my feet to start looking.

* * *

There's a man with a cowboy hat at my door. I haven't seen him in a couple of years. I can't imagine, even in my last night's alcohol binge, vapor-laden, hung-over condition, soul flayed, stomach and thoughts burning and unmanageable, that he's come to provide any kind of emotional support. He looks me up and down when I open the door. I didn't want to open it but with Raylan anything anybody else wants doesn't matter, so might as well get it over with quickly. He smirks, and I can see that he recognizes my condition, personal knowledge of a good drunk.

"I expected it would be bad," he says, doesn't wait for an invitation, just pushes his way in. "I talked to Rachel first, came up to see for myself. What're you drinking, Tim? I'll take a glass, thanks – bartender's choice. Shit, I hate flying."

He dips his head to take his hat off, keeps up his monologue while he does a quick look around the place from the door. It's changed since the last time he was here. Women will do that when they move in, change things subtly, _a little more form with the function, please –_ that's what she'd say, Chris, and then she'd rearrange the room. I try to block those thoughts quickly, focus on Raylan's complaints, hope they'll distract me enough to keep me from sliding right now.

"I hate airports. Can't understand why it's so hard to get on a flight, why they're booked. Who _wants_ to fly? I mean the whole thing is such a shitty experience, all of it. And I hate airplanes even more than the airports, screaming kids, ridiculous little drinks, no leg room, grumpy flight attendants. And they smell like stale farts – the cabins, I mean – have you ever noticed that? Got a nice rental, though." He does a half glance over his shoulder to the road. "Maybe I'll drive back to Miami."

I look out to the curb when he passes me. Of course he's driving a Cadillac. "A leopard don't change its spots," I say, mocking, but he's already in the kitchen – I can hear glass clinking on glass. I shut the door and follow him and wonder what the hell he's doing here now. I don't believe for a minute that he's here to console me.

People I didn't expect showed up for the funeral, including some buddies from the Regiment. It helped because they've been through this so they knew what to do, which whiskey to buy, what to say and what not to say, what not to bother me with. They know me. One of them offered to stay beyond the weekend – he said he could take some time off, hang out – but the guy's got a wife and kids, a job that's fitting him better than the uniform, and I do that pantomime thing well, sing and dance and laugh and can even watch myself do it and appreciate the talented acting, so I said to him, "No, I'm fine," and he left with the others. Then Rachel told me to take some time if I wanted to. I shouldn't have, I should've said no, but I wasn't really thinking clearly, and I said, "Sure, okay," and now I've been drunk for most of two weeks. I'd say it feels good, but truthfully, I don't feel anything when I get that stupid. That's kind of the point of it. I get up when I get up, and I make coffee and I drink the pot and bawl like a baby until I can't stand it anymore and then I start drinking. Thank fucking God Raylan showed up at the point in my day where I've stopped bawling because I can't stand it anymore and I'm about to start drinking. I don't trust him enough to see me hurting, but he's good for drinking with. He's good for that.

He's hunting through my fridge when I walk into the kitchen. "I'm out of beer," I say to him.

"I'm looking for something to eat."

"Oh. Good luck."

"Shit, Tim, when was the last time you opened the door on this appliance?" He slams it and goes to the phone and orders food for lunch, a bourbon already poured in one hand.

I have been eating, had a good dinner last night with Rachel. Chris's folks have had me over a few times, too, worried about me, I guess, and looking for some shared grief. It's easier in some respects being with them than being around other people since they don't try to cheer me up, and I'm sure they feel the same. They have a cook right now – they can afford it – which is a good thing because Chris's mom cries a lot, hasn't let up since the funeral, and I don't feel much like cooking, and neither does Mike. When she starts up with the tears, Mike, Chris's dad, he takes me out to the yard, and even though it's getting cold these nights we stay out there, not talking much, just a bourbon or two. I appreciate it because I can't take that much crying. Maybe Mike can't, either. They call me a cab because we drink more now, not like before. That's one of the things that made it so good, so easy – her dad trusts me. It's a simple but difficult thing to trust someone with your daughter, I think. He never has a problem offering me a bourbon, and it's always good bourbon. And when I say I'm good to drive, he believes me, except this week he doesn't even ask, the cab just appears at my door to pick me up and then he calls one to take me home. I'm supposed to be going there tonight. I look over at Raylan reading the number off of his credit card for the person on the phone, and I wonder how long he plans on staying.

"Sorry for your loss, Tim," Raylan says when he hangs up. He says it like he's added something to the order and that's all he says about it, and that's perfectly fine by me. He saunters back into the living room and I follow. I can't get up the energy to try and get him out of my house so I sink into my chair, me and a glass and a bottle and my unwelcome visitor and his glass sharing the room. He holds his out for me to refill so I do.

"What're you doing here, Raylan?" I am curious. That's probably a positive thing, some spark of interest in the world beyond memories, but maybe it's just phantom pains of the will that was amputated by a phone call on a stake-out on a rainy night, two weeks, six days, and thirteen hours ago. It seems like forever, or only a moment, depending. It's weird. I can't find myself – it's like I don't exist anymore except in some kind of useless pattern that's a habit of living, nothing more.

"I understand they've offered you Seattle. You accept yet?"

I shake my head no, think of the paperwork still sitting on my desk waiting for my signature. I have no interest in it now. I can't go there. I promised Rachel I'd stay in Kentucky as long as she needed when they moved her into the position of Bureau Chief, after Art officially retired, help her settle into the role. When I met Chris after, or I should say, when I got to know Chris, it was easy to stick around longer than I meant to, but sooner or later there'd be a transfer. Chris said, when we talked about it, that she'd move with me. I believed her, too. It was that simple, and easy. "Of course, I'll come with you," she said. "It'll be fun. A new city." She wanted to see the west coast so I put in for Portland or Seattle – I wasn't so keen on California – and it made sense that we get married before I transferred, makes it all smooth with the US Marshals Service administration.

"Did Rachel ask you to stick around longer in case she got the job in Memphis?"

"No. What job?"

"Doesn't matter. You can ask her about it. I got a different job offer for you. Well, it's not really mine to offer but I've been given the authority. I was just in Houston, drinking with some of the old gang, talking business, and someone asked who I'd recommend for this job since I used to be the firearms instructor at Glynco, and I said, 'No one I taught.'" He chuckles. "I enjoyed the look on their faces when I said that. I told them to call you. Didn't have to think too hard about it. I don't know anyone better qualified for what they're looking for. They said they'd check you out. I guess they did because they asked me to follow up, feel you out about it, get you on board if I could. I called but you weren't in the office. Rachel explained." He does an awkward hand gesture then takes a drink to cover over the space where he's supposed to say something else consoling, makes that face he always makes when he drinks bourbon, like it hurts, though I'm sure his tongue is deadened to the burn by now. Habit, maybe. "You still go to the range like most people go to the sofa and watch TV?"

"I haven't fired a weapon in almost three weeks. I'm out of practice."

"Then let's go shoot."

"Now?"

"Got anything better to do?"

Drink. Cry. "Nope."

We eat pizza then go shooting. I fall in line, fall into the routine easily. It's a part of me – trigger, front and rear sights, both eyes wide open, aware of everything in the room, put down the target. I watch the grouping grow downrange and wish everything was this easy. I wonder if I could just forget it all, just step back in time and erase the past few years, wonder if I want to, wonder if it's right to want to. Right now I would, I think, just so I can stop feeling this way, but I think, too, that's not fair to her. I think about what I'd have to give up to go back there. Fuck, I miss her. I replace the magazine with a fresh one and put fifteen rounds into a new target, fast, split them between the head and the torso, shred the middle of it.

Raylan stops and watches, raises an eyebrow at me. "Out of practice, huh?"

He actually buys me a beer after, then he tells me a buddy of his is heading up the Marshals end of a joint fugitive task force out of San Diego, with the DEA and the PFM involved, lots of work across the border in Mexico, hunting down fugitives from the US tied to the drug trade hiding in Baja and Sonora and further south in Sinaloa territory. They'd like a Marshal with experience in a shit storm; they're doing happy back flips thinking about getting someone with my kind of work history, my kind of skills with firearms. I'm ready to say yes before he finishes his sales pitch. San Diego is a long way from Kentucky, a long way from reminders. There's no place here safe from memories of Christine, no one here that I know who didn't know her. I can still smell her in the house, on my clothes. I hear her in the morning, look for her in the evening, feel her breath close at night. I've taken to sleeping on the couch so it doesn't hit so hard when I wake up. Everywhere there's an empty ragged space like something's been ripped out of my life. And that's exactly how it happened, now I think about it. I snatch at the job offer, grasping like it's the only piece of driftwood for miles and I'm barely afloat, drowning out at sea. But that's a lame analogy really – too fucking romantic. It's a rickety ladder I'm being offered, and Raylan's holding it for me. I crawl to the bottom rung.

 

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

"I hate doing property seizures."

"You'd rather arrest people and throw them in jail?"

"No, Raylan, I'd rather shoot them."

"Your sensitivity is touching."

Raylan and I watched two men carry a large mirror out the front door of the house and walk by, eyed our reflections as they passed. Raylan adjusted his hat, but me, I looked away, down at my boots in the blue grass.

"I definitely prefer arresting people. This sucks." I was uncomfortable in my US Marshals jacket that morning, standing with a clipboard and taking inventory. "When you arrest someone, you're working under the premise that they've done something wrong. But this…"

I wanted to throw an arm out, make a show of shrugging but I had a bigger audience than just Raylan, and I couldn't help shooting another quick look at the three women who pulled up when we did and had been watching us, crowded together into a tight group across the driveway from me. Rachel had spoken with them briefly and then we left them to themselves. They once lived in this house, once claimed ownership to everything in it until the US Marshals Service knocked on their door and said their belongings were forfeit. They were mother and daughter from what I could tell, the two crying silently, martyred looks. The third, a friend maybe, or a neighbor come to lend support, she stood glaring at the fireman's line of official thieves emptying the house, indignant for the household, particular acid for the man with the clipboard, me. She would look daggers my way every five minutes, stone-faced, alternating between comforting the older woman and talking to the younger in a whisper. It was probably a good thing I was too far away to hear her.

"All I'm saying," I turned to Raylan to avoid looking at the girls and made light of it, "is _that_ Persian carpet never did anything to me, probably never did anything to anyone."

Raylan watched the carpet join the line and move its way to the truck, snorted, tipped his head so his hat hid his face from the scrutiny coming from across the driveway. "Ill-gotten gains," he said. "The man is a crook, Tim."

"But the family isn't, and they get dragged down with him. I just think it's wrong on some level. Some of this is still their stuff rightfully, don't you think?"

"Technically speaking, it's not. It belongs to the poor folk who bought into the fake pension scheme, and they won't be getting much on the dollar. But the family is allowed to keep personal items, and anything they can prove is theirs and didn't come from that income."

"Maybe you'd like to go explain that to them, so they stop giving me the evil eye. I bet they'd find it incredibly generous of the legal system and the US Marshals Service that they're allowed to keep their underwear and their socks."

Raylan turned just enough to get a glimpse for himself of the women standing witness to the parade that was their life. He was smiling when he looked back at me. "Now, I hope I don't have to tell you not to let a pretty face keep you from doing your job."

"That's ripe coming from you."

He ignored the criticism, practiced at it. "This task has to get done, no matter how blue the eyes."

I gave him a head tilt and looked more carefully at the women. "Pretty face, huh? Yeah, I guess she does look good for her age – something else money will buy. Isn't she a bit old, though, even for you?"

"I'm talking about the daughters."

"Well, aren't they a bit _young_ for you? I doubt either of them is thirty yet. And just one's a daughter."

"How do you know? They look like sisters."

"I read the file, Raylan."

"Well, Tim, good for you."

Raylan walked off to take a call, leaving me alone to ward off the angry glares. I wanted to change my position on the lawn, turn my back on the gallery so I didn't have to look at them anymore, but I figured if I did they'd see right through it – it'd be obvious they were making me uncomfortable. And that would mean they were winning this battle, and I didn't like that idea. So I dug in, hammered my backbone into the spot I occupied. It wasn't my fault her daddy was a greedy, thieving asshole. I focused on the work and managed to forget about the mourners for a short while, until one of them was standing in front of me when I lifted my head from the clipboard. She was pretty quiet, sneaking up on me like that, not so quiet when she started talking. Her voice carried – I think she meant it to.

"How long is this going to take? Do you have to do it like this? It's a spectacle. Everyone in the neighborhood's watching."

They were brown eyes, distracted me from pointing out that the nearest house was a half mile away, but I recovered quickly. "We've tried doing it in the dark but…" I opened my eyes wide, rolled a hand and made a face and hoped she'd think I was an idiot and give up.

"You think this is funny? I think it's cruel."

"The families whose hard-earned money paid for all this might not agree with you." Idiot-face didn't work so I went with bitter truth.

"So your idea of justice is to strip his family?"

"You're allowed to keep anything that has been purchased with moneys that are not profit from the fraud."

"It's not my… I'm just a friend. I don't live here."

"Well then, maybe you could help by suggesting your friends don't have to stay here for this. What's the point?"

"What's the point? This is their home!"

I was tired of this conversation. No one was going to come away from it satisfied. "Not anymore it's not."

"Jesus, what an asshole. You're taking all their stuff, can't you – I don't know – be nicer about it?"

"First of all, _I'm_ not taking it – the federal government is, for crimes committed. Secondly, do you know a _nice_ way to do this? 'Cause if you do, the US Marshals Service would be happy to hear your ideas."

"What's your name?" She was breathing quickly, angry.

"Deputy Marshal Tim Gutterson."

"Gutterson." She repeated my name, making it sound like something nasty left on the sidewalk. "I'm going to make sure your boss hears about what a… how insensitive you are." She punctuated the 'you' with a finger jab, came within an inch of punching a hole in my chest.

I held her glare for long enough, hopefully, to make my point – this had nothing to do with me. Art pulled up just then, I could see him when I looked over her head. He got out of his car and I silently cheered his timing. I slipped a card from my pocket and handed it to the woman then pointed past her. "I'll make it easy for you. There he is now – Chief Deputy Art Mullen. He already thinks I'm insensitive, but I'm sure he'd be happy to have his opinion confirmed. Go on and talk to him."

The anger was gone from her face when I looked back at her – gone, just like that. She gaped at me, disbelief, I think, turned and trudged back the way she came, toward Art, across the circular flagstone driveway, past the Jaguar, over the unblemished and perfectly trimmed lawn framed by manicured and well-tended gardens near the house, a line of old oaks near the road, and an immaculate, white-painted horse fence on the far side. And I watched her go, and I confess, I smirked, imagining Art's reply. But she stopped short of that conversation, a hesitation, stuffed my card in her pocket and turned a sharp right and went back to be with her friends again. I was disappointed – no fun to be had at all, as Art would say.

Art ambled past the trio, smiled and nodded in their direction, then continued on and stopped in front of me, grinning like he does when he knows he's assigned you a shit job. "How's it going?"

"Slow."

"What'd she want?" He thumbed back at the tight group of women.

"She wanted my phone number."

"Seriously?"

A full head tilt for that. "Seriously?"

"Did you give it to her?"

"Yeah."

"You dog." He smacked me hard enough on the shoulder that he shoved me an inch or two to the right, then he laughed, and ambled off into the house. I always liked working with Art – he didn't make things difficult for me, for anyone really, not even Raylan. Art could make the most disgusting day ridiculous, laughable, just one comment from him. It was very human, or humanizing or something. Rachel was a good boss, too, but she couldn't do that. Art had a talent.

They left finally, the women, around lunch, didn't come back. The afternoon went a lot quicker without them, but we didn't actually get finished until after six. Maybe it just seemed to go quicker without the killer looks. Art offered to buy everyone involved a beer after we got back and we went out from the office. He was enjoying telling the story of me giving out my phone number to some girl while I walked off – as if I packed and loaded everything personally – with the contents of her house. I hated to stomp on his fun but I had to correct him.

"Chief, that was a friend, not the daughter, and she wanted my phone number so she could call the bureau and complain to you about my attitude."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Shit. Well, it's definitely a more believable story now. But shit, there's no fun to be had there. And I was hoping you'd have a classier date for the Christmas party this year."

Someone piped in, "You mean a date at all."

I decided to sneak a second bourbon onto Art's tab, enjoyed every sip of it.

* * *

The next day I was standing in the morning crowd at a coffee shop down the street from the court house, waiting for my extra large – the staff was brewing a fresh pot. I had a bagel sandwich half jammed in my mouth, my breakfast to go, while I double thumbed a text, organizing a weekend trip up to Indiana to visit some buddies from the Regiment. Didn't she walk in right then, Miss I-don't-like-your-attitude. She didn't see me, hiding like I was behind my bagel, and I turned my back on her quickly and kept texting. I was not in the mood that morning for another justice system discussion with her. It was Friday and nothing was going to interfere with that. I recognized her voice, hearing it a minute later, that tone that grated on my ears yesterday. She was right behind me – it was a small place and we were all crammed in waiting for that coffee to finish brewing. It didn't sound so unfriendly today, didn't grate at all, kind of pleasant as long as I kept my back to the face.

"Deputy Tim!" The woman behind the counter called out my name in the crowd, held up my cup and smiled. "Sorry for the wait."

"Not a problem," I said, phone back in my pocket, bagel back in my hand, smiling for her. I worked my way over and thanked her. The place was always busy first thing and I tried to be nice to the staff there, unlike some people, always in a rush and too important apparently to notice they aren't the only ones wanting a cup of coffee. She was usually still working if I came back for seconds later, days when the job kept me at the court house, and it was quieter then and we'd have a quick chat. She was divorced, a couple of kids, owned the place with another woman. "Guess there's a run on caffeine this morning. Should I stock up?" I didn't say more than that – she was already dashing back to the cash.

"Must be Friday," she answered back and shrugged. "We're trying a new roast today. Will you be back later?"

"Probably."

"Make it around eleven and you and I can taste test."

"Alright."

"He's the coffee police," she said to the next customer. "I gotta bribe him." She got a chuckle from me, and Martin, her partner behind the counter that morning.

I headed to the door with my breakfast, had to back out, hands full, and you know what it's like, when there's something or someone you don't want to look at in a room so, of course, you do? My eyes disobeyed my orders and I found myself looking over at her, the girl from yesterday, and she was staring at me, and not friendly like the woman behind the counter. She looked away first – I refused to – but I managed to get in a stupid grin for her before she turned her head, and it felt good to do it, and immature but what the fuck. I wondered as I walked to the court house if she worked on the same block as me and I'd just never bothered to notice her before. Just my luck, I thought, and I grumped about it to Raylan when I got to my desk.

"You should ask her out," he said, "just to see her reaction."

We had a laugh at that.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

* * *

Rachel drops by later in the day, after Raylan has left again for the airport. I'm expecting her, figure she knows Raylan is coming up from Miami to see me. She's predictable – stable, I guess, describes it better, constant. It's easy to be her friend; easy to work for her.

"Is he still here?"

I shake my head.

"So what did he want?"

"Some of my bourbon."

She walks past me into the house, looks me over, snoops around a bit, nothing subtle about it, and then sighs. She doesn't like what she sees. "Okay, so it was a bad idea suggesting you take some time off. You need to come back to work, Tim, tomorrow. And don't make me come look for you, please. It's been busy. It'll be nice to have you back at your desk."

I don't say anything to that. She's right. I should start working again. I'm looking at the hall wall over her left shoulder while I try to think. I'm pulling together the stupidest details in my head, stuff like when I need to set the alarm for to get up, whether I have a shirt clean, whether I should just buy breakfast on the way in or do I have anything that would qualify for the job in the fridge or the cupboards. I need to clean my sidearm, my backup. It crosses my mind that I could drop Christine at work first since I don't have anything happening early in the morning, just a brief second of her and how it was, so brief, and the grief crawls up from the floor and it's all over me and I turn and walk away from Rachel seeing me and walk into the kitchen. I've been so careful about keeping that stuff down, keeping her down. "Raylan came to pitch me a job," I say. It sounds sudden, the way I blurt it out, hurtful or hurting. It's meant to ward off any emotions, interrupt completely where my thoughts are going, offer Rachel the chance to distract me, and it works. When I can look at her again I can see she's tense at the news, her shoulders pull up a fraction, mouth turns down. She studies me.

"You working with Raylan again? I thought you said that would never happen. What job? He never said anything to me."

I can't believe she's surprised that he didn't. "Tell me about Memphis."

"Memphis?"

"He said you were looking at a job in Memphis." I'm annoyed, I realize, that Raylan knew and I didn't. "Is Curtis retiring?"

"Yes, and they asked me to apply. That's as far as it's gotten." She's defensive. "So, you're thinking of going to Miami to work with Raylan?"

"I won't be working with him. A guy he knows, worked with before, David O'Neil, he's part of a task force they're putting together with the Mexicans and the DEA, going after American narcos."

"In Mexico?"

"Yeah, mostly, but based in San Diego. He put my name forward."

Rachel brings her hand up under her chin. It's her thoughtful pose – I know it well. She paces to the front door, turns and paces back. "Running away won't make it easier."

"How long did you stay in Tennessee after what happened to your sister?"

Her shoulders drop again, her eyes close. "Okay, that's a fair jab."

"Uh-huh."

"Don't go."

"I'm already gone."

Her mouth twists and a tear falls.

"Don't," I say. "Please, don't."

She turns to hide from me while she wipes at her face. "Make me some coffee."

"I already got a pot on."

"Okay, then tell me about the job." She turns again and bustles quickly by. "And nothing but coffee for you from now on, got it?"

I tell her what I know about the job, which isn't much other than I'm going to take it. I'm talking to the back of her head.

When I hold a mug out for her, nudge her with it, she turns around to face me again, won't look at me though. "I'll get the paperwork started."

"Thanks."

"But you _will_ be back in the office tomorrow morning, regardless. Okay? You can work until the offer comes through and they need you there. Until then I need you here."

"Okay."

"And don't you dare leave without talking to Chris's parents."

"I wouldn't do that."

We sit and have coffee, talk about work for a bit.

"It's weird," I say, wanting to talk to someone about this and Rachel is good for it considering she lost her sister in a car accident, too. Sure, the circumstances were a little different, but the end product was the same. "I think back on everything and I find myself saying 'you and her' or 'he and she'. Is that normal?"

She actually laughs, back in control of her feelings. "I don't think there is a normal. I think we just cope however we can. You'll be saying 'me and Chris' again. I promise." Her fingers drum on the table and her eyes move around the kitchen. "Let's get you busy. What are you doing for dinner?"

"Mike and Nancy want me over."

"How's that going?"

I shrug.

I start cleaning after Rachel leaves, think about what to sell, what to give away, what to move. Now that the decision is made, I'm anxious to get on with it. I put all Christine's things into boxes – her mom told me to, said I could put it in the attic at their house and she'd go through it when she felt up to it. I feel like a coward dumping it all on her, so I sort more carefully through the drawer next to the bed where Chris had her odds and ends of stuff crammed, pick out some things to keep and put them in the drawer on my side.

The cab comes to pick me up for dinner. I leave the boxes in the spare room, leave it for another day.

* * *

"Hey, Chief." I took to calling Rachel 'Chief' right away after Art retired, just to make her relax a little. Occasionally I'd call her Roberts, for the Dread Pirate Roberts if you know the movie, and she'd swat me if I was in reach. She had it coming though, making me watch that movie, a chick flick really, one night with Nick, her nephew. I thought the movie was pretty damn funny but I wasn't going to admit that in front of a twelve-year-old boy with attitude.

"Are you busy this morning?"

"Just catching up on reports."

Rachel handed a file over the top of my computer. "This is more important. We've got a guy on the registry who's gone AWOL. His PO hasn't seen him in a month."

"Aw, for me?"

"You look like you could use some fresh air."

I pushed my chair back and got up and stretched. She was right, I needed to get out, but I wasn't going to tell her that. "Why do I always get stuck with the dirtbags?"

"Sorry, but all the good guys have given up crime."

"Shame."

"Go see his PO first."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Let me know."

"Yes, ma'am."

I called first, on my way out, making sure the parole officer was at his desk and would still be at his desk in five minutes. That was how long it took to walk it, federal court house to the probation offices, but I drove anyway, knowing there would be another destination after this one. I could remember vividly the two times in my career up to that point that I'd found someone I was looking for first stop, me as surprised as they were, and it's happened once since. That's how rare a thing it is, so it's memorable when it occurs.

This wasn't one of those times.

"I know what he went in for," his PO said, "but the man's been angelic since he got out. I can't comment on the before, only the after."

"Maybe he couldn't take it anymore," I said.

"What?"

"Being angelic." And he looked at me like I was a monster, or at least heartless. I thought about reminding him who the monsters were – I had this angel's folder in my car, hardly a recommendation for heaven – but instead, I met his look with a jaded one from my perch on the chair across from his seat at his desk, and decided to reassure him just to get this meeting moving. "Look, we're on the same side here. This guy's on the federal sex offenders registry, so it's part of my job to keep tabs on him. I've been tasked to _find_ him. It's not like it's shoot on sight or anything."

It probably wasn't the best reassurance, reminding him that I was armed. His eyes shifted to my holster and he stared at it, processing.

"Just help me find him. The best way for you and me to help him is to keep him out of trouble, right? The sooner we have a location for him, the better."

"I don't have much more than you have – an address."

"Well, what's he been doing with his time? Does he have a job? A girlfriend? Any friends he talks about?"

I didn't leave with much, but you just follow the trail. I called Rachel from the car, gave her an update, then went on to the man's apartment. The landlord wasn't keen on letting me in, yabbering about a warrant and a good tenant and Fourth Amendment rights, until I reminded him that the guy was on parole, meaning he'd waived his Fourth Amendment rights for a chance to get out of prison early, and meaning I didn't need a warrant to search his place, and how did he feel, personally, about obstruction of justice charges? He let me in finally, a sore loser though, called me a few names.

The apartment was tidy, empty of ex-cons, and the landlord huffed with an 'I told you so' expression. I wasn't sure exactly what he'd proved except that his tenant was out currently. I asked him when the last time was he'd seen him while I did a cursory check through the place, when the rent was due, if it was overdue, when the last time was he picked up his mail. It was all routine questions and routine answers and didn't tell me anything about where to find my guy.

The next stop was the Employment Center on Industrial. I waited until his case worker was free. Her desk was crammed into a cubicle in the back corner of the room and she stood up when I was led over to it, her head appearing over the divider, and I'm sure she swore under her breath, too, when she recognized me, about the same time I recognized her. I didn't know she worked here, but how would I?

"Deputy Marshal Gutterson," she said, and I knew that tone, like she was identifying something nasty left on the sidewalk. "What are you doing here?"

Anybody else and I might've been flattered to have my name remembered, but I felt like this was a warning from her. I could picture her repeating 'Gutterson' over and over, practicing, like some kind of revenge mantra. It wasn't the first time I'd run into her since that day over a year ago when I stood watch with the clipboard at her friend's house, taking inventory, but it was the first time I'd had to speak with her since. I wanted to say "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Your daddy know you're working here?" or maybe something simple like "What's your problem?" but I kept it to the business at hand. I'm a professional. "I understand you handle most of the Ready4Work cases coming through this office, ex-cons?"

"We like to call them ex-offenders."

Seriously. "Does that sound better to you, ex-offender?" I couldn't help it, pulling on this tiger's tail.

"I prefer the term, yes."

"And what if your ex-offender was innocent all along? Personally, I think ex-convict at least allows for the chance that the person was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated. It seems a little more fair, considering we don't know all the circumstances." I had her there. She looked away from me for a second, unsure of herself now. But I didn't take the kill shot. To this day, I don't know why. Maybe I was just tired. I'd been fighting attitude since I stepped out of the office that morning. I never could understand why people so often pitted themselves against law enforcement to help a fugitive. They're so quick to believe that we'll do something bad; so quick to believe that the charming ex-con that's come to them for help won't. I suppose I should've tried some charm, too, but it was easier to make her feel better about not liking me, so I said, "But, I have to give you this, 'ex-con' sure has negative connotations, doesn't it? You see, I use it hoping you'll picture a guy in an orange jumpsuit with ugly tattoos, shiv up his sleeve maybe, a violent and evil look, then hopefully you'll be more inclined to help me find him 'cause the US Marshals Service feels for some reason that he needs to be found."

"Wow, do you practice that?" The attitude was back.

"What, the speech? No, it's a fresh one."

"Nice. And do you have a warrant?"

"I don't need a warrant. He's a parolee."

"Can I see your badge then?"

I snorted, grinned, pulled it out of my back pocket and handed it to her. It was a ridiculous request and she knew it. Since that day our paths first crossed on her friend's driveway, I'd seen her at the court house twice – no, three times – and once even in the Marshals office when she came by, accompanying her friend to fill out paperwork requesting a few more items from impound. I was right there at my desk. We're a pretty casual bureau, sure, but a small one. There's no chance I could get away with acting like a Marshal in the Marshals Office and not actually be one without someone catching on and kicking me out. Seriously. Fortunately I wasn't on walk-ins that day and she avoided looking my direction after catching my eye when she first came in.

I remember Vasquez was standing in front of my desk. He doesn't miss a thing, that guy. He said, "Thinking about inviting her to the prom?" when he caught me watching her.

"Nope. Thinking I should've worn my vest into the office today."

Vasquez turned around then and watched them, too. "Do you think they're dangerous?"

"I can only speak for the tongue on the brunette."

"You make friends wherever you go, Deputy."

"It's a gift."

He laughed. His laugh reminds me of movies where the devil is disguised as a human and mingling here among us. He came up to me at the Christmas party later that month, said, "Where's your date, Gutterson?" And I said, "I don't know. If you describe her for me, I'll help you find her." And he laughed that laugh, shook his head and walked away, over to a blonde about three feet taller than him and I find out from someone later that she was his date. She had a laugh like a horse, not that it seemed to bother him.

I was pulled back to the employment center, back from my pleasant reminiscing, when she waved my badge in front of my face, handed it back. "I wouldn't know if this was real or not."

"Believe me, it's real. I wouldn't put up with the bullshit I put up with if I wasn't an actual paid employee of the US Marshals Service. And I'd drink more during lunch."

"You drink at lunch?"

"No. That was a joke."

The anger was gone when I looked at her, again just like that, just like the first time I talked to her. She looked back at me like I'd imagine a lamb looks going to slaughter, trying to figure it all out before it's too late, then she slumped into her chair and I walked around behind her, arms crossed, and leaned against the wall. I wished it was Friday; I needed some meditation time at the range.

The employment center was humming – I could see it all from my vantage point – every desk occupied, the waiting area full. Welcome to Kentucky. I thought it was an odd place for her to work. I guessed she grew up in the wealthier end of Lexington, with friends like she had, hanging around multi-million dollar houses like the one we confiscated. I wouldn't have been surprised to see her as a lawyer or a doctor, but not working here, slumming it.

"Who are you looking for?" she said, voice softer, eyes fixed ahead, on her computer screen. "What's his name?"

I told her and she turned slightly, frowned.

I caught the surprise in her look. "What?" I said.

"It's just…he's so nice. What did he do? Am I allowed to ask?"

"He's late reporting in with his PO, that's all this time, so far. And you can see for yourself what he did. He's on the registry."

"The registry?"

"Sex offenders. It's online. I can give you the website."

"Oh, uh…no, no thanks."

I'd shaken her – I could tell – and I didn't feel bad about it either. If you open your eyes, I thought, you might actually see something of the real world. _On second thought, sweetheart, keep them closed._

I left with the address of the last job he'd accepted, part-time work for a landscaping company. It seemed a little late in the season for landscaping but maybe they were building a fence, maybe a horse fence like the one around that woman's friend's crooked daddy's nice horse farm. I had her card in my hand, picked it up off her desk myself since she didn't offer it, read her name from it since she hadn't bothered to introduce herself again. Christine Brierly. I tossed the card into the folder in the car and went to see a contractor about an ex-con.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

The next day I'm back at work, first thing. I don't want Rachel to come and drag me in and she would, so I get there early and walk into the empty bullpen and into her office and say, "Got a prisoner transport for me or something?" and she comes around from behind her desk and gives me a hug and then she walks me back outside and down the street and buys me a coffee at my breakfast place. It's one of the owners that serves us. She squeezes my hand when I reach over the counter for my cup.

"Deputy Tim, it's good to see you. I was so sad to hear."

I give her a smile but I'm sure she knows there's nothing in it.

"Come back later," she says, "the next one's on me. We got some catching up to do."

Rachel tells me she and Jen, another deputy in the office, have told everyone they could think of about what happened, so no unpleasant surprises waiting for me, she says, no one to say, "Hey, how's Christine?" and have it feel like I've been emotionally cold-cocked after a sucker punch to the stomach.

She also must have given everyone the head's up at the court house yesterday, and then a talking to because no one is surprised to see me, no one pussy-foots around my desk. I get some congratulations on the new job – it means a promotion – and a hug from Jen accompanied by an invitation for lunch. "I've missed you at the range," she says, my shooting buddy, "I've got no one here to challenge me." She and I have shared a lot of car time and range time, so I've become better friends with her than I have with the other deputies, and she came to the funeral and stayed with me most of the day, been by the house a few times since. Actually, everyone who wasn't working that day came to the funeral, I guess. I didn't really notice until I thought about it later.

Rachel heaps the work on, keeps me flying and exhausted until it's time to go. The month is a blur. I work right up until five on my last day, clear out my desk and say my goodbyes at the office, my house packed, my suitcase in the locker room, and I leave from work. I'm taking a few days and driving down to San Diego. I feel like it. I'm not going to miss Kentucky. I think I'd know by now if I was. Like I said to Rachel when she came by the day Raylan stopped in, I'm already gone.

There's only one thing I'm going to miss about Lexington. And it won't matter whether I stay or not, I'm still going to miss her. The hardest thing to accept about death is that it's so fucking permanent.

I take a detour first, a bit south and east into Georgia before I head west across the continent, stop and visit Art and Leslie. He called and made me promise I'd say good-bye in person. I'm dreading it, but I'm dreading seeing anyone right now that knew me with Christine, so it's not just Art, and besides the drive is familiar and weirdly soothing. Anyway, I suck it up and show up mid-afternoon the next day and Leslie is as welcoming as ever and fusses and says nice things. People either go straight at it or they avoid the subject completely. Art and Leslie go straight at it, talking about her before my jacket is hung up in the closet, mixing past and present tenses in a way that keeps it from getting too heavy. It's that way with all the law enforcement people – they're used to going straight at tragedy. It's in the job description. So the reminiscing starts as soon as I have a beer in my hand and they've got a yes from me that I'll stay the night before starting out for California, and Art launches into the story of the first time I ran across Christine. "Ran afoul is more like it," I say, and we laugh, Leslie listening like she's never heard the story before.

"Wasn't exactly love at first sight, was it?" she says when Art's done telling it, embellishing it, laughing at me.

"No, ma'am, not even close."

It's funny how people talk about love at first sight – they say, 'you just know.' I suspect it happens sometimes that you see someone and get a strong feeling and end up together, but I don't think it's like it sounds. That strong feeling, that's just immediate lust, and coincidentally you end up getting along well enough to last, and that's all it is, luck. I mean, seriously, it's bullshit otherwise. You can't know someone by looking at them. Sure, you can lick your lips and admire the view and think "I'd like some of that," but that's not the same as _knowing_ someone. It took me almost two years before I got to that lick my lips stage with Christine. I wouldn't give her the time of day before, or her me. By the time she and I got to the 'take your clothes off before I wreck them trying to get at you' part, I knew her pretty well. I'll never, ever forget the first time she actually smiled at me. There's a lot of ugly shit in a day in the life of a US Marshal, in a day in the life of an Army Ranger, too, so something like a sincere smile from a beautiful woman, you remember that. It burns into you, in a nice way. And it's funny how people, when you get to know them and you like them, they get more beautiful. I can't honestly say now if Christine was beautiful or not to anyone else, but she sure was to me, and I can't remember her any other way.

"She was a beautiful girl, Tim," says Leslie, as if she's reading my mind, and that's as maudlin as we get for which I'm grateful.

"So you're heading to Mexico," says Art, after dinner, sipping some whiskey.

"San Diego, actually."

"That's going to be a nasty job. You could get something else, you know. You're plenty qualified."

"Like what? Puerto Rico? Guam? Idaho?"

"Anywhere, Tim, that doesn't include field trips to a country that's known for medieval executions."

"This is exactly what I need right now."

"I think it's exactly what you think you need, and exactly what you _don't_ need."

"Art, I'm going. I'm hoping it'll keep me stupid busy for the next five years at least."

"You're already stupid. You don't need to go to Mexico for that."

"Okay, just busy then."

"I suspect you'll get your wish, if you don't end up dead before then."

I pull my mouth up into a grin and his drops into a frown, but he leaves it at that. He's said his piece. "Make sure you keep in touch. And be careful."

"Are you on Facebook yet?" I know he's not – I'm just looking for a reaction.

"No, I'm not on Facebook! _Facebook,_ like hell. Email me, or call once in a while."

"Alright."

"Mexico," he mumbles, grumpy, pulling his dad thing, even still. "So, Raylan came up to see you, did he?"

"Yep."

"How's he doing?"

"I think he's drinking more."

"I don't know how you could tell through the alcohol fumes that Rachel says were filling your house that week."

I look down at my glass, annoyed, and I think Art is instantly sorry that he said what he said because he apologizes right away and that's not like him. The sarcasm though, that's old habit with him and I remind myself that I always liked that part about him, that sharp-edged tongue, slapping you hard with a comment, keeping his people on the straight and narrow. He gets up and gets his bourbon and fills both our glasses again and raises his.

"There's a time and place for sobriety, and I don't really think for a minute that this is it. Excuse this old man for worrying."

"Hey, it's nothing," I say, and I mean it.

"I'm sorry to hear about Raylan though."

"Honestly, he seemed fine. Same, anyway."

Art nods, thoughtful. "I'm not sure Miami was a good move."

"Do you think the where makes any difference to who you are?"

Art considers the question and I interrupt his thoughts. I don't really feel like getting philosophical. "So Rachel's probably going back to Tennessee."

"I hear it's pretty much a done deal."

"I figured. She's earned it."

"Yep, better bureau chief than I ever was."

"Depends on how you're measuring." I hold up my glass, eye the level, and he returns the toast.

* * *

"Tim, what the hell are you doing? Stand still, dammit, you're making me dizzy."

"Chief, just stay right there."

"Why?"

"You make a good shield."

"What?"

"Fuck." I cursed while I peeked around his shoulder. "It's her. She was at my breakfast place again this morning and now she's standing right across the hall. I don't want her to see me. I'm tired of all the nasty looks – it's bad for my chi or something."

"Who?"

Art turned around, curious who I was hiding from, searched the faces of the people with business in the court house that day, attorneys, police, judges, and ordinary folk caught up in the gears of justice, all mingling in the main hall. I slid behind him again, and when he turned back I knew he'd seen her and recognized her because he was grinning. I hate his grins.

"Is that the girl from the horse farm?"

"Yes."

"You know, she's pretty."

"She's a fucking psycho. I can't shake her."

"Maybe you got some chemistry going. You should go talk to her."

"Yeah, we got chemistry alright – the kind the dogs at the airport sniff for." I made the motions for a bomb blast with my hands. Art's grin turned into a chuckle.

"Go on. She's probably showing up here hoping to see you, too shy to call. Go talk to her."

"Chief, stop. Just…go back to being my boss and stop acting like that crazy old lady I live beside who keeps telling me about the nice girls my age at her church. I don't know if she's trying to convert me or pimp me, but either way it's creepy, and it's even creepier coming from you."

"You're pathetic."

"Why? Because I like women who like me? If that makes me pathetic, I'm okay with it. Can we talk upstairs?" I thumbed behind me, started walking backward away from her, watching her warily.

"Fine, sissy."

She went by us before the elevator showed up, caught my eye, again, and glared. I would usually let Art on the elevator first – respect, you know – but that day I scooted around him, got on ahead of him, hit the button and slumped against the back wall.

"Fuck. I think she is messing with my chi."

Art was chuckling again. "I think you like her."

"Well, that must be it. It explains why I want to shoot someone every time I see her."

He glanced at my holster, narrowed his eyes. "Anyone but you and I might think you were kidding."

Later, when she showed up in the bullpen and I was joking with Vasquez, Art looked over through the glass wall of his office, nodded in her direction and then gave me a really campy wink. I pulled my backup weapon out of my drawer and set it on my desk, slowly and deliberately, stared at Art while I did it, kept staring until he got up finally and closed the blinds on my side.

Sissy.

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

That was the last time I saw her until I ran into her again working at the Employment Center when I was looking for that ex-con. Funny thing is I'd known her dad already for almost two years. I knew him from a rifle range that I'd go to. I fit in range time whenever I can. Someone suggested once that it's a symptom of PTSD, the fact that I start feeling edgy if I don't get to a range for a few days. I don't know if I believe that though. Sure, I'm obsessive about it compared to most people, but most people don't have the experiences that I do, getting shot at and knowing that those skills with a rifle are all that stand between you heading home from Afghanistan through Germany with your buddies or you in a box on a direct flight, non-stop to Dover AFB. RIP. So, I don't know, maybe that is the point, maybe that is PTSD. If it is, then I didn't get it from combat. It was drilled into me in training, along with some other things, and then, I guess, reinforced in combat. Whatever – it's not like it affects my life adversely or anything. I like shooting, though buying the rounds can sure eat a hole in my paycheck.

Christine never said anything about it. I'm just realizing that. I guess she just figured that was me. She'd come with me to the range for the first few months, but stopped after that. I don't think it was really her thing, and I don't think she liked that I was better at it than she was. She never waved it in your face, but she was competitive. She liked to be good at things. I think she was used to being better at things than other people – she did well at school, played the piano, was a decent golfer, but she'd break something every time she stepped into the kitchen, was always tripping and hurting herself, and she could never get over flinching on the rifle, gripping too tight, nervous, I think.

Anyway, there were three places I'd go to shoot. One was the police indoor range in Lexington, for handgun practice and it was just down the block from work. Then there was my favorite place, a long distance range a ways out of the city where I'd go and make a whole morning of it. The third one wasn't the kind of place I'd shoot at normally except I knew a guy who worked there, Pilkey, Stuart Pilkey. We went through the Ranger Indoctrination Program together and you don't forget a thing like that. He didn't finish with me, got too sick, but I had to admire him, he went through it all again, cycled back through, and I was happy to run into him when I went looking for ranges after I got settled in Lexington. I'd go up there once in a while just to shoot the shit really, and he'd let me on the range with a visitor's pass and then we'd have lunch or dinner. He would teach classes to rich kids and aspiring hunters and maintain the club weapons. He introduced me to one of the members, Mike, who he liked well enough that he convinced me to help him with his rifle shooting one day. Mike bought me a drink after while I was waiting on Stuart, said he wanted to pick my brain about getting a rifle for his daughter to learn on. I wouldn't normally do that but he'd clearly done his homework and he was respectful, interested for the right reasons and talking sense. He was a good guy and we became friends and we'd chat anytime we were there on the same day and I'd give him tips when he asked. His shooting improved much to his amazement. It even got to the point where he'd ditch his old boys club and join Stuart and me for lunch on occasion. He was good company.

I knew what neighborhood he lived in so I was surprised to see him on my street one Saturday, early. He was helping his daughter move into an apartment at the end of the block, he said, recognized my truck and knocked to see if he could borrow some tools. I always knew him as Mike, never knew his last name, Brierly, until that day.

I collected what he needed and offered to help, and we walked up the street talking. His daughter was renting an apartment in a low-rise, starting a new job, just finished a Master's degree in something to do with public policy, he said. I remembered thinking I'd like her if she was anything like her father. As it turned out, she was, but it took me a while to realize it. I followed him up to her apartment and we were working on putting together a TV stand or something when she walked in. The look on her face, seeing me in her new living room – priceless, seriously.

"What are you doing here?"

I'd heard that already from her, only a few months before, tracking that ex-con, or, sorry, ex-offender.

I turned to Mike. "This is your daughter?"

"You know each other?"

"Our paths have crossed," I said, going for understatement.

"Honey, this is the young man from the hunting club that I told you about, the one helping me with my target shooting." Mike was all smiles and happy to introduce me. I don't think he was prepared for his little girl's cool response.

"But what's he doing here?"

"I gotta go." And I headed for the door, leaving it to her to tell her dad the story or not, about how we met and hit it off so well, and leaving it to him to break the news to her that she and I were now neighbors, sort of. They followed me out and I shook Mike's hand, said, "See you at the range," and tried my best to smile nicely at her. What else was I going to do?

Mike was curious, looking between us like he was missing the joke. And she was struggling – you could see it – trying so hard to find something civil to say. Eventually, she squeezed her eyes shut. I almost laughed out loud at the contortions, hid my smirk though because her dad was watching. He talked about her a lot at the club – you could tell there was a real affection between them – so it must have been difficult for her finding out that he and I were friends. She turned finally to go inside, but then turned back again and said, "Did you find that ex-con, the one on the registry? He never came back to my office."

And there it was – a peace offering, or at least an agreement to hold off on the hostilities out of respect for her dad's feelings. Now it was my turn to look awkward trying to figure out what to say. I could have told her, I guess, that I'd followed the job posting information she'd given me to a neighborhood on the outskirts of Lexington, to an address that didn't exist anymore because the house had been torn down to put up an apartment block, and that I went back and asked a few more questions at her office, avoiding her, got another thin lead, then another, then a few days later a dead body, and that was my job done. Lexington homicide took over from that point, discovered that the father of one of the girls that nice man had assaulted in West Virginia fifteen years earlier had tracked him down and killed him in a brutal and cold rage. They arrested the father and charged him and no one was happy, and justice sucked that day. It was a nice morning, the morning Christine moved onto my street, spring up and running, warm blues, and bright greens and yellows on the trees and the sun hot on your back but the breeze cooling on your face, so I decided to leave the full grisly explanation of events for another day, maybe a gloomy one, if we ever even bothered to speak to each other again. I offered her a shortened version of the truth.

"Yep."

"So did he go back to prison?"

"Uh, nope."

"So he hadn't done anything wrong?"

I avoided looking at her directly. "Not this decade."

"People do change, you know."

"No, they don't – you just get to know them better."

Mike laughed, maybe a little nervously, feeling the tension. "You sound like my neighbor. He thinks we should use the death penalty a little more liberally. And actually uses that word, too – _liberally._ I'm never sure if he's trying to be funny."

Christine's back was up. She glared at her dad for being amused, and he laughed harder at her. "Christine, honey, I'm just quoting Bill. Don't get all fresh-out-of-college on me."

I kept my mouth shut. I'm not always wise that way but I did myself proud that afternoon, at least at that moment. "See you on the weekend, Mike? I'm coming up to have lunch with Stu."

"So where is he now then? You have to know, right? Isn't it part of your job?" She wouldn't let up, this one.

"He's dead." That was my cue to say goodbye. I waved at Mike. "I gotta go. I'm on the schedule for work tomorrow, early morning. Got things to do. Uh, you can return the tools later."

She followed, damn her. "What do you mean, he's dead? Did you shoot him?"

Now that made me mad. I'm not sure why because I wouldn't have had any trouble shooting that guy. I think it was more about her impression of me at that point. I didn't think it was at all fair. I put on the mask – isn't life a joke a minute – and I told her what I'd found. "One of his victims' dads beat him to death with a tire wrench on an abandoned construction lot out on Versailles Road."

And I hoped that would do it, and I turned around a second time and headed back to my place. She followed me again, actually tugged on my sleeve. "Oh my God, you're kidding, right?"

I stopped and turned around again. "Nope, not kidding. Hardly kidding kinda material."

"Weren't you supposed to keep track of him? How does this happen?"

How does this happen? Seriously? "I tried. Remember? I tried to find him, but people weren't being very helpful. Even his PO didn't think he was a problem so he didn't call us until it was too late. He was dead before I started looking. The body was at least a week old when I finally did find him. You know what that looks like, a week-old dead body? Let me tell you, it ain't pretty. Not the most pleasant part of my job, looking at shit like that before lunch."

She stopped following me when I turned away the third time. I sincerely hoped I'd never see her again.

* * *

I don't feel like driving across Louisiana – I spend enough time there – so I stick north and go through Mississippi and Arkansas instead.

I think about her constantly while I'm driving but the driving seems to keep it from getting too raw. I'm going to make a few stops on the way to San Diego. I already cleared it with my new boss – I'm taking a vacation before I even start the job. I suspect he knows about Christine. Raylan or Rachel would've told him, probably Rachel. And I suspect they also told him that I'd likely not ask for any more vacation time for a while. I didn't really take any before, other than what Art forced on me, until Chris moved in. Vacation was fun then. She'd get me agreeing to do all kinds of stuff that I would never have considered before. We went to the Caribbean, some all-inclusive resort. Not something high on my list of things to do but we had a great week.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm trying to remember how it all happened, putting it in order. It's hard because something will slip my mind until something else brings it back, something that happened later. Memory's funny.

You know, Lexington's a big enough town that I should've been able to avoid her. Sometimes life just won't let you get away with not getting involved. I think about that a lot – why shit happens. No answer satisfies me with this, though. I don't understand why she's gone. There's no good reason I can think of. I bet I'll live the rest of my life and I won't ever find a good reason, just that shit happens. It's over two thousand miles from Art's place to San Diego. There won't be any good reason anywhere that I'll find along that route.

I pull into a motel just the other side of Texarkana, over the Texas State line. It's late. The stores are mostly closed at this hour but I find a diner open 24/7 and have a burger. I bought some bourbon and some beer earlier, in Little Rock, passing through. It's only another couple hours to my buddy's place, just this side of Dallas, but I want to drink tonight and he hasn't touched alcohol in five years. He told me I could stay a bit with him and his girlfriend. We'll see – see how it goes without some drinking to shut my mind off, get me to sleep.

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

So I was thinking maybe Mike talked to her. She showed up at my door a couple of weeks later with my tools and a plate of homemade cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip. I wasn't home. She probably thought I was because my truck was in the driveway. I had been on an all-night run with Jen, chasing leads on some violent offender on a warrant. Now there was a good use for the term 'offender' – the guy had been in and out of jail and prison, half-a-dozen different charges, repeats, assault, larceny, drug trafficking, possession. He was a sweetheart. We traced him to a house, thin leads and a hunch so no search warrant, and sat in a car from six in the evening until we finally got eyes on him when he went out at three in the morning to find some drugs. He was wired and desperate and ran, and I tackled him in the street after some tag. He punched and kicked like a wild man, and both Jen and I ended up with bruises. We were a sight when we took him to lock-up, had a good laugh about the night when I went back to Jen's place after and we drank a bit and I slept over, at least for the two hours we had until we were expected back at our desks.

"Go home and get some sleep." Rachel waved us out when we walked in.

"I got court, Chief," said Jen. "Probably most of the morning."

Rachel looked at me, arched that eyebrow.

"No way. Uh-uh. I'm not leaving early if she's not. I'll never hear the end of it. It'll be all 'see, girls are so much better than guys. Guys are pussies,' and then she'll strut around and be unbearably smug and loud and annoying."

"Fine then, you can sit here and do walk-ins and help me with the budget."

"Joy." I headed for the coffee machine. Apparently Rachel watched me go.

"Tim, couldn't you have put on a clean shirt?"

I was going to as soon as I had some coffee – I had a change of clothes in my locker. I turned around walking backward, grinned, nodded at Jen. "She didn't have anything in her closet my size."

Jen was tall, about five-foot seven or eight, slender, deceptively strong though, a good shot with a handgun, needed work with the shotgun. She was beautiful in a walk-into-a-bar-in-boots-and-jeans kind of way, always wore pressed dress shirts that screamed 'don't hug me' and really worked that star on her hip. I had seen men stopped mid-sentence, mid-step, mid-bite, mid-turn, mid-text, mid-life when she sauntered by drawing their stares and drawing out their fantasies. She was a female version of Raylan in some ways, but so different in others. For one, I trusted her, and not just as backup but as a friend. She said what she meant and meant what she said, and never reneged on a promise or a commitment. At least she never had with me. But then again I didn't demand much of her, and she liked me and didn't demand much of me.

We both caught Rachel's look, eyes flicking between us with a question on her lips when I hinted that I'd been at Jen's house last night, this morning.

"You don't want to be late, now," I said to Jen, tipped my head to the door. "Hope it's not Reardon presiding." He always flirted with her and she hated it.

"It is. I already checked."

"You want me on the rifle?"

She left laughing and so Rachel directed all her curiosity at me, hand under her chin, concern.

"She's not my type," I said, answering the look. "Or me hers." I shrugged. "Now you on the other hand…"

"Tim, don't."

That's as far as my flirting ever got with Rachel – she wasn't my type either – but that wasn't what I meant today. I didn't correct her, though. I went to my desk and drank coffee and checked numbers and dealt with phone calls. The only walk-in was someone for one of the other deputies. Quiet day.

Jen drove me home later, early, leaving work just before four. We were both bagged, crusty and silent on the drive.

"I need a favor," she said, almost demanded actually, around a yawn.

"Sure, what?"

"I need a date for a wedding."

"Do I have to behave?"

"Yes, please. It's my family."

"Can I drink?"

"Open bar," she said, dangling that carrot.

"Jen and guest. RSVP. I'm in."

"Thank you. I'll text the details. Put it in your calendar." She pulled up by the curb and leaned around me and we both eyed the girl at my door.

"Fuck me, it's her." I just wasn't in the mood for Miss Brierly, made it clear enough, and Jen said, "Who's her?"

"That's the girl I told you about, the one with the voodoo doll of me. She was probably beating it against her kitchen table last night."

"That would explain the bruises. I mean, it's not like you were wrestling on the pavement with a heroin-addicted Neanderthal or anything."

"I tell you, it was that evil witch right there. That guy was probably one of her voodoo zombies."

"I think the evil witch has a plate of cookies."

"They're probably poisoned."

"They're probably delicious. I'm hungry. Get out of the car so I can go home and have a shower and eat and go to bed."

"I might need backup."

"Tim…"

"Alright, I'm going. But if I don't show up for work tomorrow…"

"Oh, for..." And then she got out of the car, me watching, walked up to the house, smiled and said something to Christine, took a cookie off the plate and came back munching on it.

"What're you doing?"

"Bye, Tim. Just cookies. Nice girl. Go get a date for the Christmas party this year. She looks yummy."

"She hates me."

"Go." She said it around a mouthful of oatmeal.

Christine was trying to balance the plate on the tools when I got out of the car and closed the door. She was watching us curiously, smiled when she saw me, tentatively anyway. She looked awkward, a bit confused, standing there holding the plate balanced on the tool bag. The cookies were heading for the ground, tipped sideways, and one slid off and made the drop before I could get there to rescue them. I scooped it off the step where it rolled to a stop and popped it in my mouth, then made a grab for the plate before any more could get away. They were big cookies. I didn't think I could stuff two in. Jen honked and Christine turned to look and I flipped a finger at my disappearing backup.

"Who was that?"

"Jen," I said, all oatmeal.

"Is she your girlfriend?"

I finished chewing, swallowed. "None of your business."

"Uh, sorry. I just came to return the tools and say thank you." She jammed the bag into my free hand and headed for the sidewalk.

So, alright, I felt like a bit of an asshole, but a tired asshole, and a defensive asshole, and with reason. I just wanted to go into my house, put something meatier than cookies in my stomach and crash on the couch for a few hours. But then I thought about Mike and the last discussion we'd had.

He and I had met up again at the club the weekend after Christine moved in and I tried not to think about what she might have said about me to him in the interim as he walked up to say hello. But as it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. It was surprisingly un-awkward. He wanted to laugh it off, you could tell, and he grinned and said, "So, that's my daughter."

And I said, "You don't say? Wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't told me. I'm missing the family resemblance, other than a love of shooting from the hip."

He laughed out loud at that, let it out finally. "She, uh, could probably use some help with her aim."

"Nah, I think her aim's fine, though tell her if she wants to do more damage, she'll have to switch to heavier ammo considering her target of choice has a tough hide."

"Maybe she just needs to choose her targets a little more carefully."

"Choosing the right target, that comes with experience." Though probably not the kind he'd wish for her.

"Probably not the kind I'd wish for her."

I grinned, nodded. "Fair enough."

We understood each other just fine through one of the most cryptic dialogues I'd ever been a part of. I decided then that I really liked Mike, and I remembered that in time, holding a plate of cookies and watching Christine beat a retreat to her apartment, to try to change her mind about me. I called out after her, "Hey, hold up. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so rude. Let me make you a cup of coffee to go with these cookies. You got time?"

She stopped, huffed a breath and brought a hand up to her face, probably jabbing her fingers into her eyes to distract her from saying something nasty. "Alright." It was an 'alright' full of reluctance and dipped in loyalty to her father.

"Alright. Do you mind getting the door? My hands are full."

She was still awkward, and the whole thing was awkward, and I didn't help it along much. As I said, I was too tired. She started a conversation eventually after watching me grind some beans and fix a pot.

"That smells good." She sounded surprised, took a step closer and peered around me to the counter. "Where do you buy your coffee?"

"One of the, uh, owners of that breakfast shop – you know, the one just over on South Upper, the place where that girl goes once in a while, the one that always gives me the evil looks – anyway, she sells it to me at cost out of her stock."

She took that step back. "Nice."

"She's pretty cool – the owner. Then again, she's the one got me addicted to it. She's like my dealer."

I handed her a mug and she said thanks and no when I offered her cream or sugar. I dosed mine heavily with cream and then we stood there, awkwardly and me not being particularly sociable.

She tried again. "Dad says you were in Afghanistan, that that's where you learned to shoot."

"He's got it partly right. Fortunately they taught me to shoot _before_ I went over or we might not be having this conversation."

She had that look again, little lost lamb, for a moment, before it turned predator. "Are you always this sarcastic?"

"Not always. Sometimes I'm more ironic."

"There are English PhDs who wouldn't know the difference."

"They haven't been to Afghanistan."

And then she smiled, a little more honest. She was determined – I'll give her that.

"How long was your tour?"

I smirked, which wasn't fair, I mean everyone says it like that, right? So I swallowed the sarcasm and explained so she'd know something that other people might not, the gift of a peek at my life. "I was in the Rangers – we would go over on regular rotations, three or four months at a time, in and out, then back for training." I rolled a hand, repeat and fade.

"Oh. I never knew that."

"Most people don't."

"How many times did you go?"

"Eight."

She did the math. "How old are you?"

"You first."

She pulled back a bit. "Okay. I'll be twenty-seven next birthday."

"Happy birthday, early. I'll be thirty-two."

"You seem older."

"You seem younger."

"Eight times…" She was stuck on that. "Did you…?"

"You still working at the Employment Center?" I interrupted the question – it was none of her business – waved her to the front of the house, too nice a day to stand in the kitchen. She couldn't walk and talk though, stalled in the hall answering my question.

"No, that was a work placement that I got through one of my professors. I was doing my paper on… well, you'll think it's stupid."

"Only 'cause I'm an idiot. And when you're an idiot, everything's stupid."

Now she was getting it, laughed right away, again tentative though. "Alright, I'll tell you, but don't you dare make fun of me."

"I'll do my best, but I can't make promises. You'll just have to brave it out."

"I'll sick my daddy on you."

I grinned for that, and she soldiered on, once more into the breach.

"I was studying the process that ex-offenders…ex-cons have to go through to get re-established in society after their prison term. You know they really need to prepare them better before they just push them out the prison door and slam it behind them. Some of them don't have a penny in their pockets, no ID, no nothing, just the clothes on their backs, so twenty-four hours later they're hungry and likely stealing and then they end up back in jail. It doesn't serve anyone. And we're paying for it, in every way."

I looked at her straight on. "You're right. It's a problem."

She studied my face, probably looking for sarcasm. "It is."

"I know. I deal with it every day."

"Yeah, I guess you do."

I moved her along, corralled her to the front step and we talked about it for a good hour. Finally she said, "I should've interviewed a Marshal. Probably would've gotten a better mark on the paper."

"Maybe – depends on the Marshal. If it was me, I'd just tell you to shoot them all, use that death penalty a little more liberally." She was definitely getting it now, laughing at my imitation of her parents' neighbor, Bill. I took a shot at the elephant in the room. "How's your friend doing, the one from the horse farm?"

She looked for sarcasm again, continued when she felt it was safe. "She and her mom moved back to New York. It'll be almost impossible for her dad to get any kind of decent work when he gets out."

"Have a little more faith. I always found that slimeballs tend to land on their feet. Something to do with the tail between their legs, a bit like cats."

"He's a nice man."

"No, he isn't."

"He was to me."

"Albert DeSalvo was a loving and dedicated husband and father."

You could tell she didn't want to ask. "Who is Albert DeSalvo?"

"The Boston Strangler."

"Oh, right."

* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

I end up in San Diego earlier than I planned, stopping only one night in Dallas with my buddy, making excuses about having to be on the job right away, last minute demands from the Marshals Service. I lie to him basically, and then I skip my next stop completely, another buddy just outside of Los Angeles. I call him on route and promise to drive up and see him after I get settled into the job.

Everything is a little different in San Diego – more stucco, more Spanish, palm trees instead of oaks and bigger cockroaches and scruffier looking coyotes, and the ocean and the desert and the border with Mexico defining everything. All that, and plastic surgery and tequila. The guys who've been here a while, the ones I work with, not the kind with any plastic surgery, laugh when I order bourbon at the bar the first night in, telling me I'd better get used to tequila. They introduce me to both the cheap shooter kind, which I've had before, and then the aged sipping kind that reminds me more of whiskey. I still keep a bottle of bourbon from a shop in the city at my apartment though, for when I'm drinking alone, and a bottle of Jameson for when one of my old Ranger buddies shows up. I'm not converting to tequila any time soon, just doing the 'when in Rome' thing.

The job keeps me running, just like I hoped it would when I took it. I spend half my time in a truck driving over the border and back again. It's a bit like doing missions back with the Rangers, target acquisition, in and out. We spend a lot of time tracking guys, trying to get a location, or we get lucky and get a tip, and then we hook up with the Federales, maybe some DEA guys, and head south and do what we got to do to bring in a fugitive. I've been in more gun fights down here in the first six months than I have since my last combat rotation in Afghanistan. Kentucky seems kind of tame in comparison, IEDs and Harlan and mineshaft graves and all. Here it's machetes and Tijuana and caustic sodas and every fucker and his sister has got an automatic. I feel right at home. We even wander east to Chihuahua and Juarez once in a while, though there's enough just in Baja to keep us busy.

I feel sorry for the regular folks down here in Mexico. They don't want anything to do with this, with us, with the narcos. When they say it's a war zone in parts of that country, they're not kidding. The shit I've seen.

I know what Art meant when he said this wasn't what I needed, and he was right, and I chose to ignore him. It's what I wanted.

There's a bar down the street from the office and we all hang out there off-hours and they know me by name now and they've started stocking bourbon for me. The woman who works the bar during the week is nice to talk to. Her husband was killed in Iraq and she has a kid, fourteen now and a handful, had her young. It seems everyone I'm in contact with here has had all their happy compacted into a sharp laugh and a smile that seems to be more skeleton than flesh. Like I said, I feel right at home.

I walk into the bar early, around five, back from Mexico after a long few days in a truck. There's a cowboy hat drinking at a table in the corner. Imagine my lack of surprise. I order two cold beer and two warm bourbons, seems fitting, and go join him.

He never appears to change, Raylan, just more gray under the brim of the hat which he knocks back off his forehead, careless and practiced, like he's been wearing it for years and pushing it back to reveal his face when he wants you to see it and kicking out a chair with a boot, all of it in one motion, all of it like he's been doing it for years, and I know for a fact he has. He gives me a face that sums up everything ever existing between us, good and bad, and flicks it all aside like it means nothing now, in fact probably never did to him, not the sarcasm, the disdain, the shit, the shots fired, the dead and dying, the lives knocked about, and the lies, and the occasional truths. Right now it's just about the drinks on the table and the next sentence and the reason he's here. It's the reason he's here that makes me take the seat that he's kicked out for me, like I'm visiting him at his bar, not him at mine.

"Knew I had the right place when I saw the Jim Beam on the shelf. Tim Gutterson's been here, I figured."

I smile for the joke. Why not? Set the beers on the table. Sheryl, the woman working the bar, follows with the bourbon and I introduce her and everyone's very polite.

"How you been?" says Raylan when we're alone. "Fitting in alright?"

"A little too well."

"I knew it'd work out. The job posting was pretty much a description of you."

"How's Miami?"

"Hot."

"How's Winona, and your girl?" I add the last bit in as an afterthought, still awkward with Raylan as a daddy, and I can't remember her name, his daughter.

And he looks awkward with the question, finally says, "Cold."

That knocks me back, mouth dry, thinking of Christine, cold. "What happened?"

"I guess she's remembering why it didn't work the first two times we were together, remembering how she reacted then and getting it down to an art now."

_Cold_ – now I get it. I'm tempted to hit him for his stupid, cryptic response. It might get my world level again if I did – the room's tilting. "Fuck, Raylan, I thought you meant… Fuck."

Raylan catches on then. "Shit, Tim, no, they're fine. They're fine. Willa's a going concern. Winona's…Winona." He stops talking then and starts drinking and I join him.

We drink a lot while we're catching up, and I entertain him with stories about vicious narcos and their dirty deeds.

"Pozole?"

"That's what they call it, the Mexicans, a nickname. It's a soupy stew or something. We call it a caustic soda. Basically they dissolve a body in an oil drum of something nasty. Sometimes they put them in alive."

"Jesus. And I thought a hand grenade in the mouth was awful enough."

"There's always someone trying to outdo the most recent horror show. They should open a category in the Guinness Book of World Records."

"Jesus."

"I love the human race." We're drunk enough by this point that I get mean and personal. "So does Winona get triple alimony if you split again?"

"I don't think it works that way."

"Definitely cheaper than marrying three different women and divorcing them. Aren't you clever." I raise my glass to him.

"Either that or the stupidest bastard ever to get into the gender war."

"Yeah, that's probably it. I like your explanation better."

"Insult me all you want, Tim, I'm still staying at your place for a few days."

"Excuse me?"

"Hotels here are either stupid expensive or roach-infested shit holes. And by the way, you're accompanying me across the border tomorrow on Marshal business. I already okayed it with O'Neil."

"What?"

* * *

I remember when Raylan first arrived in Lexington, that evening he walked into the office. As ridiculous as it was, he wore that hat well. First appearances – I've heard they're important and I've heard they're deceiving. I agree with both. How often do you get a second chance to make an impression, seriously? But how often are those first impressions wrong?

That first month, we all tried to impress Raylan Givens. By the second month I couldn't give a shit what he thought of me. So much for first impressions.

It was the exact opposite with Christine. I couldn't give a shit what she thought of me at first. I don't know when it started creeping up on me, that I wanted her good opinion. I can pinpoint the day that I became aware of it, though. I mean fully aware. It hit me hard. She snuck up behind me a few weeks after our conversation about ex-cons, ex-offenders, whatever. It's all the same thing to me – all I see is a folder and a name and a face, and mugshots are rarely flattering, and sometimes I like the ex-con or ex-offender, sometimes I don't, and I can't tell by looking at them which way it'll turn out though I'm always anticipating that I won't. Not that that has anything to do with me and Christine – I'm just saying, is all. I was washing my truck when she snuck up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder. It was a hot day, mid-June, summer back and making no attempt to be subtle. She's lucky I didn't spray her with the hose because she startled me badly and I don't like being snuck up on. She was wearing shorts, short shorts, and carrying two sweating bottles of beer, twisted the tops off using her t-shirt and baring skin above her shorts in the process and…shit. I tried not to look – I really did – but there was no taking it back. I saw that skin. She was a woman then, and for the first time I didn't wish her gone. She smiled at me, a genuine smile, a smile that warmed the air around me even more than summer could, and my whole body took notice of her, every inch. I probably licked my lips. I remember taking the beer and managing a thank you and a smile back.

I accused her later, when we were past it all and had been living together a while, of flirting with me. She said she was just curious about the man that her daddy liked so much and spoke so well of, and that she never expected to fall in love with me. But I still think she was flirting, and I'll hold to that opinion for my ego's sake. Like Jen said – she looked yummy.

I left off washing the truck and we sat on the step and talked about how we grew up, her so different from me, until a carload of her friends from school came by to pick her up, a mix of guys and girls, and I took her empty bottle and watched her squeeze into the back. She waved out the window and smiled again. I noticed for the first time that she was beautiful.

I couldn't ever look at her the same way after that, just like I couldn't ever look at Raylan the same after he took advantage of my friendship with Bren at the FBI, like he didn't give a shit. Some moments you just can't step back from. Once they happen, that's it, you've seen something, good or bad, that is drawn in permanent marker on your awareness, you've crossed a line and triggered a wall to spring up behind you that you can't ever get to the other side of again, can't ever see a view of the world like you did before. And you can't do shit about it.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

"Do you think about it much? Afghanistan, I mean?" That was the first thing out of her mouth the next time I saw her, right after I answered the door and let her in, right after she said, "Hey, got time for a beer?"

Apparently she'd been thinking about my eight deployments since our chat a few weekends past. It was Sunday afternoon. She said she was back from church, didn't feel like doing the pile of laundry on her bedroom floor. I was so busy thinking about her in a bedroom, laundry not a part of the picture, that it distracted me into answering. "Sure, I think about it."

"What part?"

"The Afghanistan part."

Her shoulders slumped and she glared at me and I just wanted to grab her and kiss her. Funny how things change. You think it just switches on one day, change, but truthfully it slides in, coming at you crooked so you don't see it clearly until it's already a part of the scenery, subtle. I had been looking for her every day, I realized, my head turning, eyes wandering up the street to her apartment or sorting through every face at the coffee shop near work, always hoping for a glimpse, maybe a word, hoping for a chance to see some hint in her face or her conversation or her body language that she liked me. Pathetic, I know, but there it is. And here she was again at my door just when I'd stopped looking, and I wondered if that meant what I hoped it meant.

"Oh, come on." She pouted. "There must be something interesting you could tell me about. I've never been anywhere except the Caribbean and Europe, Mexico. We went to see the midnight sun in Norway once, but that's as exotic as it gets for me. Afghanistan is way off my map."

Anyone else, I would've been happy to disappoint them and their pout. Not her; not anymore. I dragged my thoughts out of the bedroom and back to a country in Asia that I certainly didn't get the best view of and tried to drum up some picture of the place that I could describe for her. And then I gave myself a mental slap, reminded myself who I was talking to. This was Christine Brierly, daughter of a successful and wealthy business owner, silver spoon polished and waiting, and from what I could tell a left-leaning Republican, if such a thing existed, or at least a soft-hearted Republican, or maybe just a naïve and inexperienced one. I wasn't certain yet. You never know how someone is going to react when you describe a day in the life of a war. It might be a turn on for some girls; it might be a turn off. You just never know. And I didn't know which kind of girl Christine was. I didn't even know which kind of girl I'd prefer given the choice, maybe just one that listened like I was describing any old office job, one who didn't have an opinion one way or another. The only thing I knew was that I didn't want her walking away that day.

People always say to just be yourself, be honest, when you're trying to impress someone. Well, sometimes that's hard to do. I couldn't help side-stepping the whole conversation, tucking it out of sight, that part of me, saving it for later, if there was going to be a later. And besides, Afghanistan was my office. Who goes to the trouble to describe their office? Seriously. I tried to imagine how that would go – "There's a garbage can, and a way in, and a way out, and a place to take a crap, and people you have to work with, some friendly, some not so friendly, and a pile of shit to deal with, and…stuff." It sounded like my work with the US Marshals Service. I was either going to bore her or horrify her, maybe ruin any chance of seeing that skin over her shorts again.

I'd done a good job of talking myself out of being honest with her. I wiped my hand across my lips and looked at the floor. That was my tell – at least that's what Christine used to say when she caught me doing it later, when she knew me better, when I knew what kind of a girl she was. It was my mind vetoing my mouth when there's something that wants to be said but I'm replacing it with something safer.

I waved her through to the kitchen. "I wasn't exactly in the touristy places."

"But you were there. You did see _something,_ right?"

Bases and barracks and smelly villages, I had ugly memories of the place mostly. The images I came up with that I felt I could share were moments only, single points in time, quiet ones, walking to mission destinations in the dark ridges and valleys before the shit hit, joking with the guys, cleaning my rifle. "The mountains were cool, especially at night. You could almost imagine you were on the moon, everything was so bare."

"Really?"

I didn't bother replying.

"Anything else?"

Lots else, but I didn't know what to say that she'd want to hear. Lots of shooting; lots of anger. "Lots of stars," I said, thinking hard. "I think they have more than we have here, but I bet an astronomer would argue that with me."

And there was that smile that I hunted for daily, followed by another question. "What did you do when you weren't working?"

"We spent our free time on the base, mostly. And a base is a base. They're boring."

"Doing what?"

"Uh, well, working out, range time, eating, being stupid."

She was watching me, expecting something more.

"Well, uh, this one time we went down to the range to see how far we could shoot accurately with an M4. That's the kind of shit we'd do. It…"

"What's an M4?"

"An M4 is an assault rifle, short range."

"Oh."

"It just got real stupid after a while, and I was trying to hit things farther and farther out, and for some reason it was just fucking hilarious."

She was looking at me like she was waiting for a punch line.

"Imagine a bullet with nothing to stop it but air and gravity. It's kind of pathetic." I made a noise, bit like blowing a raspberry, wiggled my fingers. Nothing. "There's not many places in the world you can shoot that far without hitting something you shouldn't, or getting arrested." She was still looking at me like I was the annoying commercial break in an interesting show. "One of the officers came by just when I took this one shot and actually managed to hit a boulder I was aiming at way, way past the effective range of that rifle. He was a good guy, new captain. He had a spotter's scope with him – don't know where he got it – and he…"

"What do you mean by 'effective range'?"

"How far a gun can shoot and actually have a round hit something at a high enough speed to do any damage. Point range for an M4 is about 500 meters. Accuracy, too, gets tough when the bullet slows down, starts to wobble. Anyway, I was used to shooting at those distances but with an M110, or a .50 cal in training, not an M4, and…"

"How long is a meter?"

"About a yard, little more. Do you want to hear this story or not?"

She ignored my grumping. "How far were you shooting?"

"Over a thousand meters. Like I said, it was stupid."

"Daddy says you were a sniper."

"That's right. That's why I was the one shooting. The guys were bad-mouthing the sniper platoon. Not really meaning it, but…it was for fun. I was attached to my old platoon that time, hanging out with some of the guys from my old rifle squad." I was grinning then, telling her, remembering my buddies and picturing clearly the scene and the laughter. "This captain, he watched the shot, then said, 'Gutterson, were you aiming for that boulder?' and I said, 'Yessir,' and he said, 'Well, shit, you actually hit it,' and we started laughing again. Then this new kid, specialist somebody, he said something like, 'Ouch, Sergeant, you sure showed that dangerous itty bitty bit of this stinking, god-forsaken country what a fucking badass you are. Bitch-slapped that rock real good. It looks fucking mad now. Why don't you go on down there and call it some names? Might hurt it more than that bullet did.' Then he said, 'Hey, boulder, your mama's so ugly, even the goats won't climb on her.' We had the captain laughing, too."

Nothing.

"Okay, so you had to be there. We were pretty tired. A bit punchy, I guess."

She raised an eyebrow and looked unimpressed and pretty and so fucking unaware. I grinned like an idiot for her.

"Hey, it was a long night, end of the deployment, heading back home the next day so we didn't feel like sleeping. And let me tell you, the goats there, they'd hump anything."

She smiled for that, and I turned away and opened the fridge. I could tell she wanted to ask more but didn't think it right to push, raised with manners. I hoped maybe a beer would distract her, so I opened her one, and me, and we sat in the back yard in the shade and talked about other shit. She was telling me about the people at her church and how Mike always sat beside her and tried to make her laugh during the service. I could picture him doing that.

"Do you go to church around here?" she asked.

"I don't go to church."

"I guess you're not from Lexington, huh?"

"Nope." It wouldn't have mattered if I was from Lexington, I still wouldn't have gone to church there. I didn't say that but she guessed it anyway.

"Did you lose your faith somewhere in that war?"

No, I thought, no, and I wondered if this was too big a gap to ever bridge. "No, I don't think you can call it _lost_ if you never had it to begin with."

"You never went to church growing up?"

"Yeah, I went to church with my mother."

She sat back in her chair and squinted up at the sky. "I guess it'd be easy enough to just not have faith."

"Yep. And I guess it's easy enough to just have faith, too."

That got a frown, and she reached over and smacked a backhand on my shoulder. "Yeah, I guess. Except I have to get up early on Sunday, you don't."

"You're right, but I'm up early anyway, so that's not what's keeping me from church."

"Well, what is?"

We were so different.

Jen showed up right then, right when I was trying to decide whether to answer that question, which was going to be pretty complicated, or to avoid it altogether and invite Christine to stay for dinner. I was leaning toward inviting her for dinner, but the thought that maybe she was being nice to me because her daddy asked her to was getting in the way, and I couldn't convince my lack of confidence to ignore that thought.

I was half mad and half relieved to see Jen busting through my back door like she lived there, a beer already open in her hand. She waved at me, stopped dead when she spotted Christine.

"Shit, am I interrupting?"

"No." We both said it, me and Christine, both stood up like we were caught doing something wrong, like some stupid rom-com.

"Well, then let's order something in. I'm hungry and I need some cheering up."

"Did you break up with Sarah again?"

"You can just put that head back on the vertical before I slap it back. I hate that tilt thing you do like you know everything. _Yes,_ only this time she broke it off, so order some food, something fattening. I'm sad."

"You know, this is getting boring," I said, and got her a chair from against the house, unfolded it and set it out for her. "How many times is this now?" She didn't answer, just glared, so I went in to get my phone.

I could hear the girls talking, Christine saying she's sorry about the breakup and had she and Sarah been together long. I yelled out, "Two years, off and on. Jen can't get the lesbian thing to stick on her. Just give it a week though, she'll be back and then we'll have happy Jen again."

I was looking up the pizza place number when I came back out, but I still caught Jen's shrug at the comment. "It's true. And it's fucking annoying. Sarah keeps getting distracted by some guy or other and then she decides she wants to be straight again."

"So don't take her back this time."

The look that settled on her face was one you don't see often on Jen, soft and vulnerable. "Oh, I couldn't do that. I don't mind her getting her fix of penis. She loves me."

"Who is it this time?"

"Tyler down in records."

"What? Seriously? Shit, he's a fucking dweeb. She'll be back, Jen. Want to lay bets on when?"

She laughed, said she didn't gamble on love. I told her she was fucking kidding herself, we all do, higher stakes than five bucks, too.

"What do you two want on your pizza?"

And just like that, Christine was staying for dinner. It was a good evening. Jen can be amusing when she's in the mood, and she was. At one point Christine's phone rang and she walked into the living room to take it, leaving me and Jen sitting at the kitchen table. We overheard part of the conversation, the part where Christine said, "No, I can't tonight. Next time?" and Jen grinned at me and leaned back on her chair on two legs, winked and licked her lips and said, "Should I be going?" I kicked the chair out from under her when I got up to get some more beer.

Jen left early and Christine stayed and talked longer. I walked her home, said good-bye at the door because I couldn't find any solid enough reason to get myself invited up, not with Mike's face popping up in my head and frowning. I called myself a coward on the way home, and all sorts of other names, and thought about how much fun that cold shower that was waiting for me was going to be. Shit.

* * *

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

* * *

"Nice place." Raylan follows me into my condo, walks the perimeter of the main room as best he can while avoiding the furniture – not that I have much. "Are they giving you extra pay for working across the border?" He calls out the question from the kitchen, next room on his tour. It's a nice kitchen, and I get why he asks. It _is_ a nice place, not big, but nice, better than I'm used to, better than I should be able to afford on a marshal's salary. There wasn't much available when I was looking for a place after I got here. Like Raylan said, overpriced or roach-infested. It describes the rental market, too, here in southern California. I decided to buy because I could.

Christine had a life insurance policy. I didn't even know. She had me down as the beneficiary. The check came and I remember being so fucking angry about it. I took it straight over to Mike and Nancy's and tried to give it back, reasoning it wasn't mine to keep, we hadn't even been married six months, it should stay in the family, blabbering on, but Mike just pushed it back into my hands and said, "No. It was Christine's policy. Nancy's dad took one out for all the grandkids. It was hers, Tim. She gets to decide."

"I don't want it."

"She wanted you to have it."

"You take it. I don't want it."

"Tim," and Mike waved his hand around his living room, a big room full of expensive furniture with a dry bar on one side full of expensive alcohol, "we don't need it. It's yours. She picked you and I'm happy about that. Now do something with it that makes you happy. I think you deserve it." He looked sadder then than I'd seen him yet about her death. "It would make me feel better."

I couldn't argue with that. How could I possibly argue with that? So I kept it, and he poured me a drink and we sat and watched a baseball game and he pretended not to notice as I folded and unfolded that check until it was worn enough that it ripped. In the end I cashed it, gave most of it to the LTWF, a Rangers Fund, put the rest in the bank and used it when I needed a down payment here. I try not to think about it too much. I'll sell the condo when I leave San Diego, stick the money back in the bank, for what, I don't know. I'm not sure what'll make me happy.

"No extra pay for being an idiot," I say finally, answering Raylan's question. "I had some money saved up." I don't want to tell him how I got it.

"How did you manage to save enough for this?"

"I don't spend money on anything, no alimony, no child support, just rounds at the range." Drinks at the bar.

"You might wanna think about spending some on furniture."

"I'm not here much. I just eat and sleep."

I throw Raylan a sheet and a blanket and a pillow, point to the couch and wave my hand as I walk into my bedroom and shut the door. I'm asleep in seconds, awake it seems only seconds after that. The clock is red-numbered a glowing 5:15AM when I focus on it, and I roll off the bed and get dressed. There's no point showering if I'm heading across the border today with Raylan. I always get dirty there, usually dusting up grit driving the unpaved side roads in Mexico in a truck, sometimes rolling in it. And anyway, I always manage to get dirty working with Raylan – it doesn't matter where we are.

The coffee grinder wakes him up and he stomps into the bathroom grumbling.

I haven't given up the habit of fresh and expensive coffee. I pay to have it delivered. It makes me think of Christine, and it makes me think of getting out of this stint in San Diego. Not yet, but one day. An overpriced cup of coffee every morning, one that takes time and effort to make, reminds me that it's my choices that are keeping me here doing what I'm doing. I don't complain then. I can't complain when it's all on me. But I know, drinking that coffee, that I can walk away at any time. I know it sounds weird but it keeps me grounded.

Raylan is less grumpy after twenty minutes in the shower, helps himself to some coffee. He looks at his watch. "Are you seriously always up this early?"

"Best time of the day, Raylan. Rise and shine. Early bird catches the worm and all that." I'm fucking with him, talking loud and cheerful. We're both a bit hung-over.

"Well, I got a worm for you to catch today."

"You know where this worm is?"

Pointing vaguely south, Raylan takes the first sip of coffee and makes a face, surprise, I think. "That's damn good coffee."

"I know. I fucking bought it and I fucking made it."

He does a good pissy look when he's pushed to it. "I was hoping all this sunshine would make you easier to be with, but no, you haven't changed a bit."

"You either. Where are we going and who's going with us?"

"Just you and me. We're meeting some Federales over the border, south of Tijuana."

"Is the DEA in on this?"

"Nope, this is strictly Marshal business – picking up an American citizen who's been naughty in a few states."

"So, I'm a glorified tour guide."

"Basically, though I hear you're a good shot, too."

"Urban myth."

"I'll take my chances that there's some truth to the rumors." He packs his sidearm while he's saying this.

"Alright. Let's get breakfast on the way. I haven't got much in the place to eat."

"You never do."

"Wasn't expecting company."

"Can't imagine why."

Raylan shows the paperwork at the border and the guards joke with me in Spanish. They know me by now, know I can understand them, laugh at my accent when I talk back. I'm known to them as Deputy Guero, affectionately, and they've passed the nickname on to the polícia in Tijuana, the federales. I'm the only American on the task force who isn't either Hispanic, dark-haired or bald, so I get the nickname. I don't mind it. I call them all Juan for a laugh, I even call O'Neil and Riley the same, Juan, when the Mexicans are around. I don't want them to think they're special because they're Irish.

Riding with Raylan is bringing up memories. We chuckle about things that happened in Lexington and Harlan, talk about Art and his retirement, his knee operation, sounding like a couple of old men. Christine's face is the backdrop for the reminiscing, though she and I didn't get together until after Raylan left Kentucky. I remember her more clearly driving the two hour stretch south out of Tijuana with Raylan than I have in a while. I guess it's just Kentucky seeping in for a good haunting. It hurts, but it's not crippling like it was when I first came out here. There were more than a few times that first couple of months that I'd come to work still drunk from the night before, the hang-over putting lead in my feet around lunch time, lots of water and lots of pain killers for the headache. Everyone here that I work with seems either strung-out or hung-over though, so no one ever notices or says anything as long as you're doing your job. Like I said, I fit in well here – a little too well.

"You talk to Art at all?" says Raylan.

"He calls every few months to tell me about job postings he thinks I should put in for. We catch up then."

"He doesn't like you being here."

"Nope." It's not like Raylan is asking really. He knows Art as well as I do. "He thinks I'm getting addicted to the adrenalin rush."

"Or looking for a bullet."

"Did he say that to you?"

"He did."

"Huh." I don't deny or confirm it, just change the subject. "I talked to Rachel last week. She's doing well in Memphis."

"Yeah, she is. I've spoken to her a few times."

"She keeps threatening to come visit. I'm dreading it. I'll have to get more furniture then or she'll think there's something wrong with me."

Raylan chuckles. "I don't think it's the lack of furniture that'll get her antenna twitching."

"What do you mean?"

"I think she'll be more stuck on how familiar you are with the bartender at the bar you apparently frequently frequent. What's her name? Sheryl?"

"She's a friend."

"Uh-huh."

"She's a friend," I repeat. "We talk. And she pours me a heftier shot than she should."

"Best keep her happy then. You gotta love a woman who encourages your drinking. She's a rare one."

"The drinking is good for her business. She's part owner of the bar."

"Tim, generous pouring of shots isn't good for business." He smirks and I huff.

"She's a friend." I say it a third time and feel like Peter, but that's exactly how it is. She's a friend. "She's…a…friend." I say it once more slowly so Raylan might get it, so he might not start rumors and then the next conversation I'm having with Rachel is all her rapid-fire questions about a woman I talk to over a bourbon once or twice a week. Aw, shit, who am I fucking kidding? That's how it's going to go, no matter how much I deny anything to Raylan. _So, tell me about this woman at the bar –_ I can hear Rachel saying it – _Is she nice?_ I'm not sleeping with her, and yeah, she's nice. I'm already forming answers. And then O'Neil will start the comments because Raylan will think it funny to mention it to him. Shit.

"She's a friend." I say it again, a little desperate now. I don't want Sheryl hearing this shit from one of the guys and having it ruin a good friendship. I don't want her embarrassed. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to think about any woman that way right now, especially not Sheryl since I like her. She's nice. If I'm going to hook up with anyone right now it'll be just to get off and not because I'm interested in anything beyond. It'll be just a fuck and then I won't want to be there in the morning and I won't want to see whoever she is again, because whoever she is, she won't be Christine.

We arrive at our destination while I'm having this mental anxiety attack, and I realize, a little too slowly, that it's not a police station – it's a house, and there's no one around but us.

"Are the Mexicans meeting us here?" I ask.

"Maybe I forgot to invite them," says Raylan.

I know this area, this town. This is not the kind of place that you waltz into, a guero with a badge, without lots of friends along with you, preferably the well-armed and suicidal kind. This is cartel land; this is the Wild West on Red Bull.

I lick my lips and check the gas gauge, unclip my holster, leave the truck running, one hand on the steering wheel, one on my Glock. "Raylan, what the fuck are we doing? This is cartel territory. Trust me, we shouldn't be doing anything without a formidable show of strength."

"I thought they got the Sinaloa bigwig. What's his name again?"

Raylan knows damn well what the guy's name is. Everybody knows. "Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Catching him didn't shut down the cartel."

"I like his nickname, El Chapo, Shorty. Reminds me of that Elmore Leonard novel, _Get Shorty."_

I don't laugh with him. El Chapo is smart, and El Mayo, his supposed successor, is smart. I'm in their territory, northern end of their influence anyway, and they have no law but their own. I'm watching two locals watching us. I put the truck in reverse. "Tour's over, Raylan. Time for lunch. How about a margarita?"

Raylan reaches over and puts the stick back in park. We glare at each other.

"Relax, Tim. It'll be fine. The guy is as white as the paper his warrant's printed on. He's not connected down here, just hiding out."

Hiding out in Sinaloaville.

"There's a warrant?"

"Yes."

"Do you have it? Fuck, is any part of this official business?"

"Well, this part's not official, exactly. I'll make the case later to my boss."

"The paperwork at the border?"

"Oh, it's legit, said you were taking me on a ride-along, checking out the scenery in Tijuana."

I took Mike on a ride-along once. He flew down to visit after I'd been here a year, wanted to hold onto the connection, I think. It was good to see him. He was curious about what I did so I got the okay and he tagged along on a very tame run, just picking someone up from a Tijuana jail and bringing him back, something like what I figured I was going to be doing today with Raylan. He was so excited, Mike, meeting Mexican Federales and local police and seeing a drug runner close up. Different world for him. I got him drunk afterward at the bar – lots of tequila, no Nancy around to shut him down early.

This time is apparently not at all like that time, except I figure Raylan and me will end up drunk too, at the bar, if we don't die first, and no Nancy either.

"This guy's wanted, Tim. I promise you, there's a warrant. We can say we ran into him. Lucky us. I think the DEA wants him back so they can lean on him, get him to cut a deal."

"And you?"

"Me? I just want to talk to him."

Fuck. It's not that I'm afraid, but this is stupid.

* * *

I can stare down a man with a gun, fully aware and focused, but put a woman in front of my desk asking me to lunch and I can't think straight or speak properly. I must have said yes though because me and Christine ended up walking down the street together, talking, found a table at the Sidebar Grill a couple of blocks from work. Lunch was good – I was hungry. I think I had tacos or something. I kept her laughing telling her stories from the job. There's a lot of funny shit that goes down when you work that intimately with the public. A friend who works for EMS said to me once, "Tim, the human body was not meant to be seen naked." I told Christine and she chuckled. Then I told her that my response was that the human soul wasn't meant to be seen naked either.

"There are nice folks."

"You haven't seen them naked."

She had a nice laugh, never faked it. I asked her why she didn't phone my boss and complain about me, back when.

"Something you said made me think twice about it. It didn't feel right."

"What did I say? I'd like to know so I can keep it my back pocket for the next time someone decides to hate me just because I'm the guy with the badge."

"I think that's exactly it," she said. "You said it wasn't you taking the stuff, and something about the folks he swindled whose money was paying for it all. It made me feel like I was on the wrong side of it, at least being mad at you. I still feel bad for my friend though."

"If it makes you feel any better, there's some parts of my job I hate. That's one of them. Mostly, the families of the people we end up arresting, they're just caught up in it all, innocent of it really, especially the kids. It's a bit like slow boiling frogs in water – they don't understand what's going on until it's too late and they're fucked over good." A picture of the stand-off at the Truth family home popped into my head, Art and me and Raylan with guns up and the whole fucking family pointing their barrels back, then the kid pulling on us in the house. That memory shoved aside all the fuzzy feelings for family members of criminals. I let a smirk sneak onto my face.

"Yeah, you seem broke up about it." She was looking at me funny – couldn't blame her – so I described that particular situation. "Oh, my God," she said. "Would you have shot that kid?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure I want to think about it either. I'll let you know if it ever happens again and I have to find out for sure what I'd do. We can talk about it at the funeral."

"Whose funeral?"

"Well, that depends on what I decide to do."

That stopped her cold and I cursed my stupid mouth. And then she laughed. Surprised the hell out of me.

"You're terrible."

"I'm dead serious."

"I know. I don't think I've ever met anyone who is so blunt about all the shit in this world."

"You haven't been to Afghanistan."

"Apparently I need to go."

"No, you don't. Kentucky's nice. Stay here."

I paid for lunch. She let me. I fell hard.

* * *

 


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

I tried to get shot when I first came to San Diego, I really did, not suicidal, just not caring. I took every risk and went in hard and volunteered for every foray across the border and led whenever I could, but I couldn't find a bullet anywhere. Eventually it got to the point where I stopped looking for one. I don't know if I gave up or came to terms with Christine being gone or just gave in to fate. And now, I don't think so hard about that bullet, I just do my job. But this… This is stupid, even by my standards. Getting out of this truck here, right now, is stupid.

Raylan opens the door and gets out. "I'm just gonna knock, see if anyone's home."

"Fuck." That particular expletive, spoken to an empty car, must be for me, I think. No one else is listening. I figure I'll find that bullet now, now that I've stopped looking for it. I turn off the engine and get out, too. What the fuck – the sun's nice today. And I'm an idiot, remember? I'm in full Ranger mode now, eyes restless, high alert. "Who is this guy, Raylan, and what's he done to you?"

"The man's name is Krispin Gillespie. He's responsible for the deaths of two of our CIs in Miami. The one guy was carved up, still breathing when they started sawing, the bits dumped at the FBI office in clear plastic bags. He was working for the Feds, too, I guess. The other guy was paved into a parking lot, mushed into the heated asphalt by a steam roller. It was pretty gruesome, even by cartel standards, though I still think your pozole story wins. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it."

So here we go – it's Tommy Bucks all over again, only with me in tow. Now I don't mind the idea of a real-live, honest-to-God dirtbag coming to a violent end, I don't even mind doing it, but I do mind going to jail for it, especially Mexican jail. You can't trust the police down here – just check out the Missing 43. And it's guilty until proven innocent, Napoleonic law. Makes you appreciate Judge Reardon a little. Whoever this guy is, he's not worth it, not to me.

"If you're gonna drag me along on one of your vigilante escapades, Raylan, the least you could do is make sure we're poolside, rooftop restaurant having a nice lunch."

"Umbrella drink?"

"I'd take it. Why am I along with you on this vengeance mission, not that one?"

"I assume you're referring to the self-defense shooting of Tommy Bucks?"

"Call it that if it makes you feel better."

"I didn't need you in Miami. I could handle that one by myself, bikinis and all."

"I'd like to have seen those bikinis." I'm doing a full circle while we're talking, eyeing the other buildings on this road, checking the routes in and out, watching who's watching us. "Look, Raylan, I understand that you're angry at this guy." This is me trying to reason with a man who wears a cowboy hat. "So, let's go talk to O'Neil, get him on board, then we'll come down here and drag this guy's ass back across the border. I'm sure the team would be up for it. We can even tie him naked to the bumper of the truck on the drive back if it would make you feel better. But we're not doing this. For one, I don't like the Mexican legal system. And secondly, I don't know if you know this, but possession of firearms is against the law down here. It scares the shit out of me, that much gun control – _everyone's_ carrying concealed. Give me the good old US of A where it's legal most places to walk around with a gun and mostly everyone's friendly and open about it."

I don't think he's listening, or maybe he's knocking too loudly on the door to hear.

"Raylan, it's a hundred and thirty cartel-controlled miles back to the border."

"Talk in Spanish, Tim, then I won't feel so bad about ignoring you."

The clever and colorful Spanish retort on the tip of my tongue stays there, wasted, because somebody actually answers the door. Seems Raylan and I aren't the only idiots around.

Raylan recognizes the face and smiles. "Krispin Gillespie – good to see you again." But Krispin is apparently not so happy to see Raylan again. He swears loudly and turns and runs off back into the house, Raylan following.

The two Mexicans that I was watching, the ones watching us from the doorway across the road, they disappear awfully fucking fast about the same time as Raylan, so I hightail it to the truck and start it and back it right up to the front door, put it in park but leave it running. Then I get my assault rifle from behind the seat, the one that I am really not allowed to carry down here like this, chamber a round and turn to face the world, keeping the metal door of the truck between us. I'm trusting to hope that Raylan's got everything under control behind me while I wait, and curse, and watch everywhere at once.

Raylan doesn't take very long, appears with his catch, grinning like the fucking psycho he is.

"Ball him up and put him in the back, and be quick about it." I'm barking orders. I've got two pickups in my view that weren't there five minutes ago. They're coming down the road and not at a casual speed. "Raylan!"

"I'm on it, Tim." His voice carries from the back of the truck. "Jesus, relax."

"I'll save my relaxing for the bar. Hurry up."

He's in the cab pretty fast, and I join him and put the accelerator on the floor, probably kick a pail's worth of dirt in the front door of the house thinking about the two hour drive back to Tijuana. I don't even want to think about the hour navigating that fucking city to get to the crossing. This is the truck I drive anytime I work in Mexico. It looks like a piece of shit, old body, but that's just camouflage. There's a nice engine under the hood, good tires on it. If someone took the time to look closely, they'd see it for what it is, undercover-cop-mobile, but a quick glance and it passes for Mexican rural. Riley and I got drunk one night, not too drunk, and took this thing for a drive through a wrecking yard to ding it up, scrape here, dent there. That was a good time. I'd prefer to avoid bullet holes though, they're a bit of a giveaway. It's an advert for your career choice if you've got bullet holes in the tailgate or down the side panels.

"I cuffed our passenger to the gate," says Raylan. He's weaving his head around to get a good angle in the mirror to watch our tail. "I just hope the rust isn't so bad that he can work himself free of it."

"I can't vouch for the body on this thing."

"Engine seems fine."

"Yep."

The pickups are still following but they won't catch up with us until I get slowed down, so I got some time to think. I'm picturing the highway ahead, picturing the route. The fast way back is along the Transpeninsular. I know that road – it snakes through Ensenada first, stop signs and overpasses, good ambush points. And even if I skirt the city, which isn't easy and has its own gauntlet of stop signs and turns, then beyond are bridges – I hate bridges – and lots of connectors on and off. Not good.

"What're you thinking?" says Raylan.

"I'm thinking our friends," and I thumb back to the two pickups keeping pace, "are calling their friends right now, a little Whatsapp back and forth, planning a party for us." It's just me and Raylan, and even on our best day, we can't take them if they're coming at us from two sides.

"So what's your plan?"

"Plan?"

"You do this every week, Tim, so O'Neil tells me."

"You gotta have time to plan to have a fucking plan, Raylan. A plan suggests advance knowledge. I didn't know the fucking plan in the first place, so how the fuck was I going to have a plan going in, or a plan coming out, or a plan for when the fucking shit hit?"

"There's no shit hitting yet."

"Give it a couple of miles." I'm chewing my lip, thinking hard. Ensenada isn't too much farther and I don't want to go in there and give our friends a chance to catch up and introduce themselves. I have no desire to get closely acquainted with them. I slam on the brakes and skid onto the next road heading west. It's more a dirt track than a road, just rough enough to suit me, quiet enough too, and heading into some low hills and turns.

"They still following?"

"Yep," says Raylan, turning around in the seat now, no need to pretend anymore that we don't know what they want. "They're persistent. This is a terrible road."

"Krispin works for the cartel, doesn't he?"

"Apparently, he does. Who knew?"

"Fuck. What kind of a fucking name is Krispin anyway? Sounds like a breakfast cereal."

"I think there's an actor."

"Where?"

"An actor named Krispin."

"Oh."

The next turn provides the opportunity I've been looking for, a few seconds behind a hill and out of sight of our tail. I practically stand the truck on its nose stopping it in the scrub off the shoulder, scramble out with my AR-15, the one I'm not supposed to have down here without permission, and set up on the road. Raylan gets my intent and pulls his sidearm and runs back beside the trail the way we came and ducks down behind a boulder. The two pickups come around the knoll one after the other, in a hurry, and see the muzzle of my rifle too late. Raylan stands to line up a shot. They have no time to react. I'm sure it's an AK in the hands of the passenger, but I'm not pausing to take a careful look. I aim and shoot the driver of the lead truck and he jerks back, a head shot, but the vehicle keeps coming. Too fast. Still moving too fucking fast, and I haven't got time to get out of the way. I hear Raylan shooting, hear him shouting. I jump on instinct, sheer reaction, get a foot on the hood, twist and catch the windshield with my hip, cradling my rifle and hoping to God I don't blow my own fucking head off, roll up and over the roof and then I'm airborne. It seemed like a good idea at the time, this stunt, until I hit the ground on the other side. I land hard on the road, happy at least it's not concrete, taste blood and dirt as I tumble. Getting up is the work of adrenaline only, and I scramble for a boulder of my own to start looking for targets. I congratulate myself that I didn't bother showering as I pull the trigger.

Raylan and I have the advantage, got them from both sides. It's not hard picking them off when we get a shot. I get one poor fucker crawling out of the lead truck. It's flipped, hit a ditch after running off the road which proves my theory that you shouldn't operate motorized vehicles when you're dead. There's another guy pinned in the back behind the seats when I go to clear it and I put one in his head, too.

Raylan is still firing at the other truck. He's killed the driver and shot out the tires on his side but someone has pushed the dead driver over and is trying to back out of this turkey shoot. The truck is weaving like it's drunk and ends up stuck in the brush. They're still shooting from inside. I love the cartels. I really do. They don't worry about being politically correct – hand grenades and completely illegal fully-automatic weapons are their favorites, and sure enough, there's a grenade or two on my new body buddy when I roll him over to do a dead-check. I borrow them and trot back to the fight. The last two amigos are ignoring me, all their attention on Raylan who's still firing at them. I pull the pin on one of the grenades, yell, "Fire in the hole!" to get Raylan's attention, then lob it over into the open side window. Boom. I stand there and watch while Raylan moves closer and finishes the job.

He's watching me limp over while he replaces the magazine on his sidearm, raises an eyebrow. I give him the thumbs up in answer.

"You're bleeding." Raylan points to his face, points at mine. "You okay?"

"Oh, I'm fucking awesome, thanks," and then my hip starts to throb, "but maybe you'd better drive."

We both turn at the same time to look back at our pickup, still off to the side, still no bullet holes that I can see.

"I wonder how our friend, Krispin, is making out?" says Raylan and saunters over.

Krispin is wisely the type of guy who keeps his head down when the bullets fly, but he looks a little banged up, and he's thrown up all over himself and the truck.

"Nice," says Raylan.

"Let me go. They'll kill you." He's whining and threatening us at the same time. It's hard to take him very seriously with vomit all over him.

Raylan doesn't seem concerned either. "Haven't managed to yet," he says, shrugs at me.

"You're cleaning it up," I say, then ignore the mess. "I think we should take side roads until we're well north of the city. How badly do you think they want this guy?"

"I guess we'll find out."

"That information might have been important as part of that planning session we didn't have."

Raylan nods. I stand for a moment waiting for more from him, though what exactly, I'm not sure. We both get back in the truck.

"You're navigating," says Raylan.

I check my face in the mirror – just some scrapes and I've bit my tongue. I dig a rag out of the glove compartment and clean myself up a bit. Looking at the dirt and blood streaked on the cloth, I think about that bullet, that maybe I am still looking for it. Then I think that maybe Raylan is looking for a bullet, too. Don't we make a cute pair?

* * *

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

* * *

I think about that ride-along with Mike as Raylan turns the truck around and takes us back to the highway. I learned a lot about my father-in-law that trip, just me and him talking at the bar. He told me about being raised in a working class family in a small town in Iowa, cow-patty bingo and shooting old rifles in the fields outside of town and dreaming of getting away. I told him about my blue-collar dad in Alabama, the tough love and the drinking and the desperation to get the hell out as soon as I could and be a better man than him. I think the alcohol that one night softened us both up, me and Mike, and we bared all. I wouldn't have done it before, be that honest, afraid that if I opened my world to him, he'd close his to me. I had nothing to lose by then though, and as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about. We were much the same. That night I finally understood why he was okay with me and Christine being together. He sees his younger self, I think, when he looks at me, and that's why he trusts me.

He never had a problem with it, with me marrying his daughter, and because of that, Nancy didn't either. In fact, I probably had more trouble with it than any of them did. I tell you, it was hard some days being around all that money. I felt like I couldn't keep up. Christine's family, they always acted like if there was something they wanted, they'd get it. It was just a matter of time, of finding it and paying for it, no other considerations like whether or not they deserved it or could afford it. For me, there were always some things that never made my list, items and experiences forever relegated to jokes about winning the lottery or being somebody else. For me, some things were just impossible. Maybe it's a personality flaw, defeatist. Maybe it's the difference between my dad and Mike's dad, our inherited outlooks and expectations. Maybe it's just that I didn't want some things all that much so I never bothered to try. Maybe it's a bit of everything.

I remember being at the country club range on a Saturday afternoon, talking with Mike while I waited for Stu to finish working. It was the same week Christine had showed up at the Marshals office and taken me out for lunch. Mike and I were sitting in the lounge there – yep, this shooting range had a lounge, comfy chairs and staff and everything – drinking iced tea and discussing ammo. I tried to sound casual when I turned the conversation to his family, asked how his son was doing in college in Mississippi, and then slipped in what I hoped sounded like an innocent question about his daughter – "Where does Christine work?"

"Corporate headhunter downtown. Why?" He was looking at me funny.

"Oh, um, I owe her lunch."

"You owe her lunch? Now that's odd, I heard from her that she owes _you_ lunch." And he grinned at me.

"Uh, it's…"

"She's a big girl, Tim, all grown up. She does what she wants."

"It's not like…"

"I don't want to know." He held up his hands, warding off the evil. "I'm her daddy, remember? We don't want to know these things."

"But…"

"No…no."

Stu interrupted. "Hey gentlemen, what's up?"

"Tim's trying to date my daughter."

"Really?"

And my stupid insecurities took over while I tried to make the whole thing into a joke. "I think Mike told her to be nice to me."

"Is that what you think?" Mike shook his head, chuckled. "Tim, I stopped telling her what to do, oh, about fifteen years ago."

I must've had my thoughts written across my forehead for Mike to read. He started laughing.

And Stu was laughing, too, probably at the same thing, the confused look on my face. "Buddy, better start running."

But me, I wasn't laughing. I was working on recovering from being stupid obvious while at the same time trying to figure out if Mike was kidding or not. He gave me her work number and address before he left, wished me luck, still laughing as he walked away.

Stu took Mike's seat. "His daughter?"

"Seriously, dude, what the fuck would she want with me?"

"A change?"

"Maybe."

"Fucking go for it, man. Her old man's loaded."

I stood up, pissed off now. "Just shut the fuck up. Let's get outta here, go get a drink and some food."

He was enjoying himself a little too much, and kept up the chuckles when he got up and turned toward the exit and started walking. I followed him, grumpy.

"I'm just messing with you," he said over his shoulder.

"You know what, shithead, it's the money that's keeping me from going for it."

"That's just fucking stupid. Since when are you a pussy?"

I grabbed his shirt and spun him around. "You want to go right here?"

He knew I was kidding, laughed harder, hands up in surrender. "Just saying, buddy, you miss all the shots you don't take." He slapped my shoulder and headed for the door. "Come on. I'll buy the first round."

"And the second for being a preachy asshole."

"Poor Timmy," he said, held the door and patted my head as I passed, "little feller's in love."

"I said fuck off, didn't I?"

"I didn't hear you. Is she nice? I never met her."

"I'm not talking about her."

"You are definitely screwed."

I thought about what Pilkey said, and the truth in it. First opportunity I had with my work schedule, almost two weeks after Christine took me for lunch, I walked the few blocks to the address her dad gave me, waved my ID around and got escorted to her office. She looked like something expensive behind glass, locked in a showcase, sitting there at her desk.

I leaned on the door frame. "Hey."

"Hey. Tim." She sounded surprised, looked surprised, eyes moving past me and back and forth, wondering what trap door I'd dropped down from. "Where've you been? I haven't seen you around at all these last couple of weeks."

"Work's been stupid. I've been pulling all-nighters." The evidence of that statement was standing in front of her. I'm sure I looked a wreck. I needed to do some laundry, my house was like barracks after a deployment, my eyes had the classic slept-in-the-car bags and red hue. "Lunch?"

"You look like you need a nap worse."

That was a nice thought. I would have crawled under a blanket and fallen asleep around her if she'd offered. "A quiet lunch is close enough. You free?"

"Sure. My treat."

She grabbed her purse and took me by the arm and led me back out to the street and into a quiet lunch place, then, after watching me droop into my sandwich, she proceeded to tell me hilarious drunken stories about Wildcats games from her undergraduate days at UK, just to keep me awake.

"Football or basketball?" I said when we'd stopped laughing at what they did to the mascot.

"Didn't much matter. I just went to party."

"Bet you were a good partier."

"Not as good as some. You?"

"Oh, I got good at it. Didn't have much choice."

"What d'you mean?"

I described the carpet of glass, beer, whiskey, vomit and used up and spit out tobacco on the barracks hall floor the morning after the day we'd get back from a deployment, the party lasting from the minute we hit the base until, I don't know, however many hours later we needed it to last. "I learned to put on my boots before venturing out of my room," I said, grinning and not so tired anymore, "my _old_ boots."

"Eww."

That made me smile, her nose all crinkled up.

"I guess you had a lot to celebrate, though."

"I guess."

* * *

"I thought you were Boyd Crowder, back from the dead."

Raylan pulls me from my reveries, my brain one place, eyes another, scanning the road ahead. "What?"

"When you said 'fire in the hole.' You're lucky I didn't shoot you."

"Since I was throwing a grenade in your direction, I thought I'd better speak in terms you'd understand. Didn't think you'd get it if I yelled 'frag out'."

"What?"

"Exactly."

I pull a large bottle of water from the back – I keep a pack of it behind the seat with my assault rifle and some other necessities – drink half and pass the rest over to Raylan. Then I turn around to check on our baggage. I'm glad there's a truck cover on the bed. We've pulled it on to hide Krispin from view of passing cars. He'd been tugging at the gate earlier, clanging and banging, but now he's quiet. I gave him some water before I shut him in. Fortunately the sun has quit on us. There's a covering of clouds keeping him from baking alive.

"Do you even have a warrant for this guy?"

"The DEA are tiptoeing around it, interfering."

"In other words, you don't. So how are we supposed to get him across the border?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead."

Bullshit, I think, but don't say. I turn my attention to something useful, look at the map spread out on my lap. "Take the next left."

"Left?"

"Yep."

"If that's what you want."

"What I want is a cold beer. You got one?"

"Nope."

"I don't see that we got any choice but to get back on the coast highway again. It's either that or an extra hour up to Tecate on a two-laner." I wave my hand eastward. "Or, we could really try to fool them and take a three hundred mile detour across the mountains and back."

"Scenic route it is, then."

"I think we'll stick to the old highway though, as far as it goes. Not as nice scenery but no tolls. Right now I'm getting flashbacks of that scene in the first Godfather movie, Sonny Corleone going down in a hail of bullets at the toll booth. Remember that part?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Why do you think the cartel cares about this guy?"

"Not sure."

"Raylan, we're in the back country of Baja with a fugitive, cartel nasties on our ass, and a handful of grenades." I throw my hands out. "What could you possibly say to make me change course now?"

Raylan slides his eyes my way, decides to spill. "I think the Zetas want him."

"Why?"

"I think he's got information about them and he was going to pass it to whoever wanted it most."

"The Sinaloa cartel is fighting over territory with the Zetas in north central Mexico – you know that, right? I'll _bet_ the DEA doesn't want the Marshals Service messing in this. Fuck, Raylan…"

"This dirtbag is playing every side for money. I want to see him get what's coming. And admit it, Tim, you're enjoying yourself."

I'm not admitting anything to Raylan. It's about an hour before we have to rejoin the main highway. I set the map aside and start watching the road ahead and we drive silently, listening to the periodic banging in the back when Krispin starts getting frisky. The road is quiet now that the scenic highway along the coast has reopened. A landslide took a whole section into the ocean – pretty spectacular – and traffic was rerouted along the old highway for a year at least. But people are enjoying the brand new, four lane, divided highway again, so this one is getting ignored. I haven't decided if quiet is good for us or bad. It's not long before we're coming up on the first bridge on this route. I'm getting edgy. Raylan notices.

"What now?" he says. "You're twitching."

"Bridge." My eyes are bugged out on the map. I'm thinking hard. "Pull over by this hill. I want to check it out first."

"You reckon they might be set up waiting for us?"

"Yeah, I do, 'cause that's what I'd do."

Raylan pulls over. I'm behind the seats tugging on a rifle case. Inside is a Remington 700, sniper rifle, like my USMS issue. I learned on the military version and am still rather fond of the bolt-action. It works for me, this rifle. She's my new baby. I take her up the hill and she and I have a look at the bridge below, scanning the span end to end. I don't like what I see, vehicles at either side for no reason that I can come up with other than trouble for us.

I trot back to the truck and lay out our options. I'm not thinking about how fucking angry I am at Raylan right now, and I'm not thinking about the piece of shit in the back of the truck, I'm thinking about how to make life hell for the assholes who presume they can get me in an ambush. I'm taking out as many as I can on this trip back up to Tijuana, and I'm crossing the border with a smile on my face. Then, I'm going to have a nice hot shower and go down the street and boost Sheryl's business profits for the month. That's my plan. I give Raylan the highlights and the AR-15 and the borrowed hand grenades.

"Alright then," he says, looking down the sights on the rifle. "I'll go down and piss them off and shoot a few, you climb your hill and shoot the rest."

"Fine by me." It's a good use of resources, working to our strengths.

Raylan gets back behind the wheel while I gear up. He's watching me and clearly has something to say and I wait for it while I get everything I need. He doesn't say anything though, so I head to my hill.

"Tim," he calls me back. Here it comes. "I've done enough rifle shooting to know that it's a different thing hitting a target from that kind of an angle. You got this?"

"The Hindu Kush is a mountain range, Raylan."

He nods. "Just checking."

"Give me a chance to set up before you get their attention."

"I'm in no hurry." He's eyeballing one of the grenades, holding it in his hands and frowning at it.

I point at it. "You know how to use one of those?"

"They do have television in Harlan."

"Just checking."

I jog up my hill, ignoring the hip that's already stiffening painfully. There are enough things to distract me from it and more important things to worry about.

My hill is part of the foothills of the Sierra de Juárez, if I've got my geography right. It's a steep enough drop down the side toward the bridge which runs across a dry valley. It's not much of a bridge, a causeway really. Raylan's job is to tiptoe up to this side of it, draw out the narcos closest, then hopefully, after we've picked off enough of them, the fellows at the opposite end will come forward in their macho madness to join the fight and we can finish them off. That's the plan and we all know what they say about plans. It's not much of a plan, but I'm counting on them not expecting an experienced sniper and a crazy-ass cowboy with more in his holster than a pistol.

* * *

 


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

Jen picked me up for our wedding date _after_ the church service, for which I was grateful. That gave me time to work out and clean my truck and then remember how to tie a tie properly. Jen drove a truck, too, and I watched her from the door as she parallel parked hers with ease. Jen's was a proper truck, one for towing, a dually. She had a horse and a horse trailer and a small piece of land and a small barn. She left the horse at home today, though, and her sidearm, put on a dress. Now her folks knew she shared her house and her life and her bed with Sarah, most of the time anyway, and I got the impression they were okay with it as long as they didn't have to try to explain it to the conservative relatives, so, on occasion, to save the explanations, they asked her to pretend. And on those occasions she would ask me to be her date. I was her fill-in man. I guess she cared for her parents more than she cared to front the march for social change and I was not going to judge her for it. I understood why she did it. Jen had one particular quality that I valued over everything else about her – she was loyal. She was loyal to her folks, loyal to a fault with Sarah, loyal to me, and she grew that circle to include Christine when she finally moved into my place, probably because of the smile on my face all the time.

Jen looked gorgeous, not at all like the marshal I knew and swore with and drank with and shot with, and sometimes, my bad, I couldn't help thinking what a loss for the men in the world. She slipped gracefully out of the truck and across the road, looked me up and down and said, "Gutterson, you look swell, a right proper date for a Kentucky girl."

"You know how long it took me to tie this tie?"

She fixed it.

I checked it out in the mirror. "Alright, I'm ready. Take me to the open bar…I mean reception." Then I said, and I meant it, "Jen, you look fucking amazing. If Sarah could see you now…"

"Why Tim, thank you," and she curtseyed and batted her eyes at me, then she leaned in and said quietly, "Sarah's coming over later."

"Tyler?"

"Chewed up and spit out."

"I can picture him in that role."

She giggled. She only giggled when she was happy.

I steered her out the door. "Let's get going. I'm thirsty."

I held my elbow out and she looped her arm through it and we walked sedately to her fine carriage and I handed her into the driver's seat. She had agreed to be the DD. That was the price of my surrogate boyfriend services.

I was already a few beers in and had been dragged twice to the dance floor by my date when I saw Christine, green dress, walking in on the arm of one of the ushers, probably late from wedding party photos at some scenic locale. It was like she was standing on the other side of the Grand Canyon, so far from me. I thought about the day I met her for the first time, pictured the manicured lawn, the stately trees and the enormous house and the expensive cars, and the expression on her face when she spoke to me that day, like she was looking at something nasty left on the sidewalk, and I went to the bar for a drink, whiskey this time.

I watched her dancing with her date, wished it was me, though I hate dancing. At one point she walked right past the table where Jen and I were seated. She didn't see me. There was this unscalable, impenetrable, but invisible barrier between us, so I just watched. I watched her laugh, watched her walk, watched her order a drink and smile, watched her eat, watched her tuck her hair back in a clip, watched her sit at her table and sip a drink. I was a total fucking stalker.

Jen noticed finally, traced my line of sight. "Hey, it's the evil witch."

"Yeah."

"You know, Tim, she's too cute to be the evil witch, too nice, too. She's more like the gingerbread house – you just want to eat her."

I had a rather intense physical reaction to that statement, and Jen knew it, and she laughed, and I ducked my head and blushed and chuckled. "Yeah," I said, when I could speak again. "You want another drink?"

"No, I'm done."

I stood to go to the bar.

"On second thought, I changed my mind," she said. "Be a good date and get me a ginger ale."

When I came back with her order, and a beer, Jen was gone, likely doing the rounds and smiling at the old aunts and uncles. I sat down and looked around the room for a green dress, the one decorating the present I wanted for Christmas. The green dress was standing beside Jen, who was smiling, all innocent, and shaking hands with Christine's date, all of them smiling and polite. I caught a hand gesture over to my side of the hall, three heads turning. I stood up again quickly, my back to them, and did a repeat trip to the bar for another whiskey. They caught up with me there. Trust Jen to throw lighter fluid on an already stoked fire.

"Tim, look who's here." This was my partner being subtle. "It's your favorite neighbor."

I smiled, too, and checked out my shoes and said hi. I didn't want to look at her face, figured I'd give everything away. Introductions went around, friend of the groom, usher, banking, terrific, long-time friend of the family, how do you know the happy couple, yada-yada, something about the military, Afghanistan, a nod, friend of Daddy's from the range.

"What are you drinking?" he said, her date, and I pointed behind the bartender, "Woodford," so he ordered one, too, pretended to like it. "So that's where I know you from. I belong to that club, like Mike. I've seen you there," he said, "You work at the range, right?"

"No, that's his friend that works there." Christine was on it fast. "Tim's a marshal, like Jen, here."

"Oh." He looked at Jen differently. "Marshal?"

"Deputy United States Marshals," she said, snaked her arm around my waist and leaned in for a Kodak moment. Christine giggled and pulled her phone and took a picture.

"I'll bet you two don't look like this at work," she said. "Smile, Tim, it's a wedding not a funeral."

"No," I said, scowled, "And that'd better not show up on Facebook. Rachel will expect me to dress in a suit every day. I gave that up my first year." I don't think I sounded serious enough though, not when her response was, "Good idea! Does the Marshals Service have a Facebook page?"

"It's Stuart, right, your friend – the one that actually works at the range? He's an instructor, or something?"

The date was making a point, I think. I didn't like his tone. "That's right."

"You two grow up together?"

"Nope, went through RIP together."

"RIP?"

"Ranger Indoctrination Program."

"No shit."

"No shit."

"You were a Ranger? As in Army Ranger?"

I was taking a drink, just raised my eyebrows for this dweeb.

He smirked, looked at Christine, back at me. "Prove it."

"What? To you?"

"Yeah."

"No." And I walked away.

"Well, there are lots of guys around faking it," I heard him say. "How do you know he's not faking it? Look at that guy just last week, the one on YouTube."

"Asshole." I didn't say it loud enough for anyone to hear but Jen.

She followed me back to our table, slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes. "You know why he's being an asshole, don't you?"

"Born that way?"

"No, asshole," and she kicked me with a bare foot, "because of the way she's looking at you. She doesn't look at him that way."

"Jen, the space between her and me is this wide." I stretched out my arms as far as I could.

"Are you really this stupid?"

I gave her a level stare, finished my whiskey.

"I'll get you another so you can drown your sorrows."

"Bite me."

"Not my flavor."

"I'll dip myself in chocolate."

"That might do it." She ran her hand through my hair before she walked away. "Poor boy."

I sat and studied my empty glass and thought about that invisible barrier until the drink appeared, set down on the table in front of me. I looked up to say thanks, straight into brown eyes instead of Jen's blues.

"Are you ever gonna kiss me?" she said.

I licked my lips and thought about it and thought about everything past and present and said, "There's this huge barrier between us, if you hadn't noticed."

"No, I hadn't noticed. Where exactly?"

"It's invisible, but it's there."

She leaned over and put a finger on my chest, poked it like she did that day at her friend's daddy's horse farm, only this time it didn't leave me cold, it left a pool of heat that spread quickly. "A barrier?" she said. "Really? I don't feel it. I think it's in your imagination." And she walked across the room and out the doors into the hallway.

I'm not so stupid as I pretend; I got up and followed.

* * *

I don't know why these things are coming back to me now, setting up here on my hill and waiting on Raylan. It's seems an odd time to be thinking about Christine and sex. I've got a magazine in the rifle, two more full beside me, round in the chamber, and I'm calculating for a high-angle shot, using the first post of the causeway as my target, memories intruding while I do the math and make adjustments. They're good memories – Christine in that green dress. So far gone now from here. I let it play out in my head – Christine in that green dress, and Christine out of that green dress – while I sweep the bridge through the scope, looking for bad guys. It's the first time I've been able to think of her like this without the hurt outweighing the happy. I guess I'm getting used to it, her being gone. So when Raylan finally does show up on the road below, I'm feeling alright – not good, not bad, just even – and I'm ready for it, well, sort of. I mean, I'm ready for the fight, not for him making me laugh. But he does.

He comes screaming around the corner in the truck, then slams on the brakes, backs up, inches forward, then backs up around the corner again, out of sight. Two seconds later he's speeding around the corner again, slams on the brakes again, but a little closer this time, inches forward, backs up, inches forward, backs around the corner again, and out of sight. It's fucking comical to watch, and I'm laughing, like what the fuck. He does it again, only this time one of the narcos walks out into the middle of the road with an AK-47 and stands there all macho. Raylan inches forward again, backs up, inches forward, like he's dancing with this guy. And this guy on the road turns around to his friends still hiding down the incline and he shrugs, and Raylan leans his whole body out of the window with the assault rifle and shoots him, twice. What an idiot, the narco, I mean. Stupid, arrogant and stupid. A bunch of them jump out then to take Raylan on and avenge their man, and that's my cue to start picking them off. Raylan keeps firing while he backs up out of range. After four of them go down, they realize they've got a second shooter somewhere and dive for cover under the causeway. Raylan takes the opportunity to drive up quickly and toss a grenade. I can't hear it from my hill, but I imagine the sound of it bouncing on the pavement, and count it out, and it detonates right when it drops off the edge of the road where the land dips to the dry river bed. Beautiful. I guess Raylan did watch a lot of war movies on TV growing up. He used that grenade perfectly. Only one guy scrambles out of the ravine after the dust settles, and I put a bullet through his chest. Hasta la vista, baby.

Raylan backs up again and proceeds to clean the windshield, washer fluid spraying and wipers going. I think he's doing it just to make me laugh. He honks the horn, too, taps out 'shave and a haircut'.

I turn my attention to the far side of the causeway and scan the trucks parked there. A head pops up and I take a shot at it and I think I hit him. He doesn't pop up again. I hear an engine turn over and one of the pickups backs out to get clear of the others. I can't see in, tinted windows, so I start putting rounds through the windshield as fast as I can. I don't want anyone getting away from here and talking to someone up the road. Raylan just charges it, straight across the causeway and into the moving vehicle. I told him while we were planning that they'll probably front-load the ambush, most of their men at the lead end of the bridge, told him there are likely no ex-military elements in this party of Sinaloa cartel members, no time for them to organize, and I guess I'm right, because when Raylan gets out of the truck, nothing happens. Everything's quiet.

I scan the area, up the road, back down the road, both ends of the bridge, the hills surrounding us. I wait in place a bit longer, eyes and ears straining. Nothing. Eventually, I hump it back down the hill at a run, around and down the road and over to the far side of the causeway where Raylan is standing, looking oddly incongruent, military assault rifle and a cowboy hat.

"Sorry about your truck," he says, "It's got a few new dents."

"I don't care. It's not my truck. And anyway, the dents make it look more authentic." But I'm really focusing on the bullet holes in the front bumper, the one in the windshield, wondering how I'm going to explain that to O'Neil. No point worrying about it now, though, we've still got at least another hour of driving to live through. I turn in a circle while we're talking. Raylan's going to think it's a nervous tick, and I guess it is.

"See anything?" he says, after I finish my spin.

Nothing. "Nothing moving."

"Okay then. How far to Tijuana?"

"Why, you thirsty?"

"A Corona would be nice about now."

Yes, it would.

* * *

 


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

"How far to Tijuana? I didn't hear your answer."

"You didn't hear it 'cause I didn't say."

"Well, how far?"

"We'll be in the city in an hour, give or take, at the border another thirty minutes after that, maybe sooner, depending on traffic."

Raylan nods, squints against the sun down the road, then in the other direction, then he walks around to the back of the truck. "I think it's time I had a little talk with our friend here."

Krispin is struggling. We can both hear him and it's annoying. He's interfering with my good mood, that good mood that comes over you after a firefight when you're still standing and the guys you're fighting with are still standing. I'm alive and Raylan's alive, and there are fewer cartel members in the world, and I've been able to claim more than half of those kills myself. I'm happy with that considering what I've seen down here and how many of our Mexican compadres we've lost since I started the job. On top of it all, I'm congratulating myself that I thought ahead this trip, anticipating what Raylan was capable of and bringing some weapons with me that aren't traceable. It wasn't hard for me to do. We confiscate truckloads of firearms and gear from raids here. We're not supposed to keep any of it, but I've been gifted with some things by our Mexican Federale friends – re-gifted is probably a better term for it – and who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? It wouldn't be good for international relations. Both of the rifles we've been using are 'unofficial'. I've even got a nice 1911, pretty handgun, in the back that I use only at the range since I can't exactly register it legally. It's a good mood I'm in, alright. Other than the bullet holes in the truck and the possibility of more trouble on the way to the border, things are looking good.

I walk over to the side of the road to take a piss, try to ignore the rattling of Krispin struggling to get free of the cuffs on the gate. When I'm done, I turn around to see what the fuss is all about, and Raylan's just standing there looking down at our cargo, clearly making him nervous. I'm hoping Raylan's going to deliver a bare-fist relaxant, or maybe gift wrap Krispin in duct tape. I'm tempted to go help him do the job, tie the bow, if that's what he's up to, but I'm thirsty, so I head back to the truck for some more water. I start the engine to hurry Raylan along, but instead of balling him up tighter, Raylan hauls Krispin out of the truck and shoots him in both knees. He does it so fast I can't do a thing about it, just stare in the mirror, then he saunters back to the truck, hand up on his head to hold his hat because the wind is starting to gust up, and he gets in and says, "There, now we can turn on the radio and listen to some music while we're driving, and we don't have to worry about the border."

I can see the guy in the rearview, rolling on the ground in pain, bloody knees and sand and rock, little dust devils swirling on the road and the sky blue and grainy and nothing and no one for miles. The only sound is the shots still ringing in my ears until the sudden white noise that covers it, Raylan fiddling with the dial on the radio, trying to get a station with decent reception.

"What the fuck, Raylan?" I say, and look at him and he looks back. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Trying to find some music."

I look in the mirror again, then turn around to get a better view, crane my neck in the process. I repeat myself, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Tim, the guy is a murdering piece of shit, but the DEA wants to cut him a deal so they can get a line on another murdering piece of shit that you and your task force boys probably already have in your sights and will shoot any day now anyway. And meanwhile this asshole gets to live out his scum days in a nice house in a suburb somewhere in WITSEC, and I'll probably be the marshal who has to babysit him when I'd rather be cutting his balls off. This is better, trust me. Now how 'bout we head back to your place and clean up and go to the bar for a drink?"

"You were gonna do this all along." I'm not asking – I know. And I know I'm starting to sound pissy.

"Tim, I'm sorry if you got shot at."

"That's not the fucking point, Raylan. I'm used to a two-way shooting range. That's not what's fucking pissing me off."

"Then what is the point?"

"That you don't tell me shit. If this was what you wanted to do all along, you should've said. I could've organized a lovely execution for him that wouldn't leave my balls hanging out there."

I can't believe I didn't see it coming. Willful denial of the facts at hand. I'm a fucking idiot, and Raylan has succeeded where Krispin could not – he's annihilated my good mood. I reach over and take Raylan's gun which is sitting on the seat between us where he set it down when he got back into the truck, and I get out and trudge over to Señor Krispin, and I lift my arm and pull the trigger and put one through his skull to finish the job.

I hate this shit but I can't leave him out here like this. There's a whole lot of reasons why I can't just leave him here like this.

"Well, that was mighty Christian of you," says Raylan when I get back to the truck and hand him back his gun.

"Fuck you," I say in response, then dig under the shit behind the seats for the machete I keep there that my friend with the Mexican police, Oscar Morales, gave me as a joke. It's sharp – I sharpened it. It doesn't take much to separate Krispin's head from his body and make it look like a job done by one fucking cartel or another. I'm sorry to lose the machete but I don't have the means out here to clean it like it should be cleaned so I leave it there beside the head.

Raylan's got something on his mind when I get back behind the wheel, but I stop him from saying it, say something before he can get it out. "Find anything on the radio yet?" Fuck, I'm angry. He should have told me.

He adjusts his hat while he studies me a minute. "Tim, I think you missed a career in set design."

I put the truck in gear and spin the tires on the road. "It's two hours back to my apartment, if we're lucky. Do you think you can you keep your hands in your lap?"

He's likely smiling but I can't look at him just now to confirm it. I'd probably lose it if I saw his grin, leave a second body out here and that would definitely stir up an investigation, a dead US fucking Marshal.

"Reception out here is lousy," he says, "all these hills," turns the volume up on the radio, "but this station's coming in okay."

The guitar sounds are rough, rough like the ride, like the day, like the land we left the body on, rough like justice, like life around the US/Mexico border, rough like my throat craving a cold beer, rough like the calluses on my gun hand, rough like my thoughts, like Raylan's upbringing, like mine, rough like the floor of my apartment because I never fucking clean it, rough like losing the one person who made you think things could be different. The song the rough guitar is playing is _Born Under a Bad Sign,_ and I take it as a bad sign. Albert King, blues, perfect.

Raylan starts talking over it – he can fuck up anything for me. "You know, I have no idea what kind of music you listen to. Hope you don't mind some old rock."

Mind. I mind everything. Everything is under my clothes and scratching on skin like the grit from the wind here. I mind, but I don't say anything, not a word all the way back to Tijuana. I don't trust myself to talk. I think about a cold beer and it gets tangled up with thoughts of Christine, strong feelings dragging up strong feelings, and the grief is back now like a fucking hurricane. I feel like driving off the cliff this road is hanging on to. But I don't - that's just not me.

Before we join back up with the coastal highway, I pull the truck onto another road and drive through the dry hills and eventually stop. My assault rifle and my sniper rifle aren't coming home with me. Raylan makes a joke when I get out with them – "What Tim, you gonna shoot me finally?" Not yet, I think, but I'm not going to reply, either. I still don't trust myself to talk. Maybe when we get to the bar, if we get to the bar, then I'll get into it with him. I wipe down the rifles and get a hammer and screw driver from my toolbox in the bed and disable them, permanently, then I toss them into a ditch with the ammo. I think about the 1911 still in the vehicle. That one means something to me, another gift, the giver gunned down off-duty. I'm going to risk keeping it. I've got enough friends in CBP that I'm sure I can find someone to vouch for me if I get into it at the border, if we get someone I don't know, if they search the truck. And that reminds me that we have to clean out the back – vomit.

I need to stop for gas, too. Hopefully our friends have given up trying to keep us down here, too much collateral damage just to hold onto one snitch. I can't believe he's worth it to them, no matter how much he knows…knew.

Raylan chucks his handgun with the rifles.

We stop at the first Pemex we come to and Raylan fills up the tank while I go talk to the guy working the place, see if I can get something to wash up the mess in the back.

"Tienes un cubeta y un poco de agua que podría utilizar…y un trapeador, por favor?"

"Para qué?" The guy is loving my accent, pathetic as it is. He's this close to laughing.

"Demasiado tequila." I give him a stupid grin and we're instant buddies. He's laughing outright now, collecting what I need from the room behind the store front. He fills a pail with water and hands it over with a dirty mop, says there's a hose out back of the building. I pay him for the gas and add some extra for his trouble. "Gracias, amigo."

"No hay broncas."

Guys like that renew my faith in people. I'm feeling less like killing someone until I start helping Raylan clean the truck.

The rest of the highway drive is quiet and we make Tijuana in good time. But each corner in the city makes me tense, alert, each stoplight, every guy standing on a corner looking like he's got no business being there. I'm looking three or four cars ahead, three or four behind, checking who's still with us after each turn. Finally we're in line at the border, then talking to the guard and fortunately she's someone I know. I tell her I was touring Raylan around the sights, keep my head turned so she doesn't see the scrapes and ask questions. I introduce her to Raylan and then ask how her kids are doing – I can't remember their names but she doesn't seem to notice, tells me what a little shit her middle one is getting to be, thankful that the youngest isn't following the older two, yet. After she waves us through I start to relax, happy to be back on American soil.

I head straight into the kitchen of my condo when we get there and pour two bourbons. "Shower," I say, pushing a glass toward Raylan, then I walk into the bathroom with my drink. Raylan can wait; I'm dirtier. I pour myself another glass when I'm done and alone, Raylan gone into the bathroom to clean up. I drink it and lock up my handguns and check email.

He emerges later, looking civilized – "How about another drink?" – watches me down the remains in my glass. "Never mind."

"I'd rather drink at the bar tonight," I say. _I need a buffer,_ I don't say. I need more people in the room so I can hide, so I can be distracted. I want to talk to Sheryl about something mindless, like her stupid neighbor who lets his dog out at all hours to bark at the moon, or her daughter's swearing habit, or her mother nagging her to move back to the east coast, or the asshole that skipped out without paying last week, the one we've all promised to have a chat with if he ever shows his face again.

She's at the bar when we walk in, talking to one of the other guys from the task force, Riley. She smiles her hard smile my way, then frowns, narrowing her eyes, then pours my favorite. "What happened to you, Tim? You're limping."

"He was wrestling pickups. I told him it wasn't a good idea." Raylan answers for me. Everyone laughs.

I take a seat at the bar, sandwich myself strategically between Riley and the wall to hide my scrapes and get a barrier between me and Raylan, then I take the drink on offer and ask Sheryl for a beer, too. She gets two glasses down, fills them and slides one to Raylan on the other side. O'Neil is over at a table and he hails us and I wave. Raylan takes his drinks and goes to join him, leaving me and Riley with Sheryl.

Riley can see my face in the mirror behind the bar. "You okay?"

"I am now."

"How did it go?"

"Boring. What's new around here?"

"The usual – there was some noise around Ensenada earlier. Locals think it was a cartel mash-up. Seems a little deep in Sinaloa territory, though. Maybe the Tijuana cartel is trying to regain ground."

"I thought they had a deal with the state to keep it quieter."

"No civilians involved, and it was pretty remote."

I nod, drink my beer. It's cold, delicious. "Should warn you, I got some bullet holes in our truck."

Riley turns on his stool to face me, gives me an appraising look. "Shit, Gutterson, how the fuck did you manage that when your day was so boring?"

"I was riding with Raylan Givens."

"We'll have to get it fixed." Riley turns his head and looks over at the table where Raylan and O'Neil and a few others are talking, getting rowdy and it's not even eight o'clock yet. "O'Neil told me a bit about him."

"Whatever you heard, multiply it by a thousand."

"You want something to eat, Tim?" says Sheryl, coming back from the kitchen. "We've got fresh fish tacos tonight. I ate three when Hector was prepping them. I can vouch for them – they're good."

"That sounds great, thanks."

"Riley?"

"I ate before I came."

"How about your friend?" Sheryl nods over at Raylan.

"He's not my friend."

She looks at me a minute, calculating something, then wanders to the far end of the bar and yells her question across the room.

"Hey, charro, you hungry?"

I grin for the nickname, everyone else is chuckling in appreciation of her humor and O'Neil pokes Raylan, "She's talking to you, cowboy."

Sheryl's pretty cool.

* * *

 


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

Christine was standing at the end of the hallway. I guess she was tired of waiting. She walked over and stepped right up against me and kissed me. That kiss felt like the first shot of whiskey after a long day, downing it too fast, heating you up from your lips straight down through the pit of your stomach and past, and leaving you licking your lips for anything residual and wanting another round, but maybe a little slower going down, the next one. So I helped myself to seconds, licked my lips and hers. And we were both laughing at the ridiculousness of everything past, the wasted time. There was some catching up we needed to do and quick. I've never wanted a woman so badly that I couldn't wait, but I couldn't wait. It had been growing slowly, tension and need, so slowly I didn't notice how bad I had it until she kissed me. I pulled her into the room where guests leave their coats and we got our hands up under each other's clothes and got just enough shifted, just enough skin on skin to satisfy the pressure building from the heat of that first kiss. I had her pressed up against the wall, off her feet, but not in that 'swept off her feet' romantic way. No, it was not romantic, at least not by my book – it was awkward and messy and passionate and fun. It was team work at its finest. We were giggling around the moans, or maybe moaning around the giggles, whenever we could catch our breath. I felt giddy and stupid, like I was back at prom or something, fumbling for handfuls and mouthfuls and a release that came too quickly and just left me wanting more. I love that feeling, wanting more. And she smiled at me, and it was the most beautiful thing. There were voices in the hallway, close by, that I could hear now that the blood wasn't pounding through me, deafening everything, so we got quiet and watched each other while we waited for whoever it was to move on. I set her down then and we straightened ourselves out as best we could in the dark then stumbled out into the hall when it was clear and found the bathrooms. She disappeared into hers but I stalled at the door to the men's, wanting desperately to follow her on into the women's for a second round. It was probably a good thing that another woman walked in while I was standing there considering it, so I didn't. I cleaned up and fixed my tie and my shirt and grinned at myself like an idiot in the mirror. I was so fucking happy right at that moment.

When I went back out she was waiting, grin to match mine, held my phone out for me – it got knocked off in the tangle and she found it when she went back to look for her hair clip. She tugged on my tie, pulling me closer, and kissed me again and then we walked back to the reception room. I kept shooting glances at her after we separated at the entrance, checking that there was no evidence on her, nothing out of place, or maybe I was really just wanting to keep looking. She was beautiful. Truth was I couldn't keep my eyes off her even after I was satisfied that everything was in order.

We left a couple of long hours later, she with her date and me with mine. Jen dropped me off, thanked me a half dozen times for giving up my Saturday evening and playing along with her charade. I told her I didn't mind at all. I really didn't.

I watched out the window at my place until I saw Christine get dropped off, saw her wave at the car and disappear quickly into her apartment, alone. I stood watching up the street longer, wondering if I should go knock, but she took the lead, came back out of her building a few minutes later and started up the sidewalk. I was out my door fast, met her halfway up the block for another kiss then took her back to my place and took that green dress right off this time.

We didn't get out of bed until after lunch the next day. Sex and talking can eat up most of a Sunday if you let it. I told her more about my military service when she asked. She listened like it was any old job, then she invited me along for after-church dinner at her parents' house. "You're not serious," I said, but apparently she was.

Dinner was alright, a little awkward. No one could decide how to introduce me to Nancy, Christine's mom, Mike's wife, Christine's boyfriend, Mike's range buddy.

* * *

Sheryl reaches over from behind the bar, puts her hand on my arm, lightly, and I look up from my drink and my memories. She's staring between me and Riley, past us to the door. "It's him," she says, raises an eyebrow.

The expression on her face is one that she reserves for customers who aren't welcome at her bar. None of us, the people I work with, get that look because we like it here. We like Sheryl. Occasionally we'll get an exasperated look from her when we get too rowdy, a finger wave and a warning, "If you're going to rough-house, take it outside." We wouldn't dare step too far across her line at her bar, bite the hand that pours. She's pretty easy going all around, locks up some nights and lets us stay so she can sit and drink with us.

"The guy that didn't pay?"

"No. I doubt he'll show his face here again. This is the guy that was in looking for a fight last week."

"What happened?" I missed it, I guess, probably across the border, or in bed early to catch up on sleep.

"He pulled some racial bullshit and I refused to serve him."

Riley and I both turn to look. I'm not sure which one 'he' is. There's a group of five men, they cross the room and take a table at the front.

Sheryl is frowning. "He's brought his brute squad this time. I don't like it."

"Just wait and see," says Riley, ever reasonable.

"Wait for him to start something? There's five of them!"

"What choice do you have?"

"What are our assets?" I ask, a serious expression.

Sheryl's lip twitches and she answers, "Your brains," then points to Riley "his strength," then at herself, "my steel."

"My brains, his strength and your steel? That's it? Impossible. Maybe if I had a month to plan… Now, if only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something."

Sheryl grins outright and relaxes a little. "I've got a wheelbarrow out back. It's over the albino."

"Well, why didn't you list that among our assets? Now, what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak."

Riley's looking between us, confused. "What the fuck are you two on?"

Sheryl's giggling. _"Princess Bride,"_ she says. "Never seen it?"

Riley shakes his head, "No," looks at me funny. _"Princess Bride?"_

"Another?" Sheryl waves a bottle of bourbon – _my_ bottle of bourbon – and I nod and push my glass over and she pours, liberally, then glances back over at the brute squad. "I guess I'd better go see what they want."

"Just ignore them. Maybe they'll go away."

"Tim, this is a bar and I'm the owner. I'm certainly not going to make a profit on you two tonight, so I'll take what I can get from them."

"Maybe you'd make a profit if you stopped pouring us doubles and charging us for singles," says Riley, holding his glass out. "You know we've got no will power."

Sheryl's quick, pulls the tequila out from under the counter and fills Riley's glass. "Sweetie, I'm not so foolish as to chase away my best customers. You and Tim and your friends, you make it so I don't have to hire an anti-brute-squad squad. It's not a bad thing being the law enforcement hangout. I feel safer."

"I feel cheap," says Riley and stares into his glass, "and used."

"Shut up and drink, Riley. I don't mind being cheap and used." I've had my back against the wall since I sat down, keeping an eye on the door and the room, so I've got a good view of what the brute squad is up to, and it looks like they're just drinking. Sheryl takes their order and smiles and jokes and everything is fine. My eyes slide over to O'Neil's table where Raylan is amusing everyone with a story. I wonder which story it is and hope to God it's not a recent tale of two US Marshals in Mexico.

It's a weird space we're inhabiting right now, me and Raylan, this tension we're slipping on, trying to keep our balance while the drinks keep coming and the day's events brew in our heads. In this weird space with us, but unaware, are O'Neil and Riley and Sheryl. Seated with Raylan and my boss is a DEA agent, one we work with often who's actually a good guy, and a Mexican Federale that we call Poncho engaged currently in a tequila war with Rodrigo Herrera, another US Marshal, both Hispanic, from either side of the great Latin America/British America divide, the Mexican/US border. There are two women from the Customs and Border Guard over at another table who waved and smiled a hello when they came in earlier, and the brute squad at table two, pissing me off just for breathing the same air, and here but not here, Krispin Gillespie, head separated from his body by a couple of inches of bloodied dirt, a threat in the back of my mind, and floating above it all, Christine, the love of my fucking life, dead almost a year now and still and always in my thoughts. It's a full-on mariachi band, Mexican hat dance pounding on my skull – tension and anger and grief. I feel like a fight. And it's not long before the brute squad obliges me with the opportunity. They make derogatory and lewd and racist comments, direct them at Claudia and Consuela, our CBG friends. Everyone stands up to defend the border guards, but I start the brawl, in the mood, a fist traded for the word 'puta.' That's not a nice word, and I'm not feeling like forgiving them for it.

The first angry contact, knuckles to jaw, rids me of Krispin, the chaos that follows loosens the day's tension. We drag the fight outside and at some point the biggest shit-kicker in the brute squad gets me pinned and gets one hit in before Raylan has him by the throat, drags him backward and they both trip over a body laid out on the sidewalk. I laugh, watching the three of them struggling to get up, stroll over and hit Goliath hard when he finally gets on his feet and he goes down again. I help Raylan up. He grins for me like he did earlier when he decided to fuck up my day, like the fucking psycho he is. He ignores the rest of the fight, starts looking for his hat.

Then the police show up, more bodies in the ring. Someone tugs at my shirt, tugs me backward out of the group.

"Tim, enough. It's over."

The police are separating the pairs still going at it. Riley is struggling in the grip of one of the officers. I want to head back to help him, take a step toward them, but the hand is still holding my shirt so I turn to swat it away. It's Sheryl and she gives me that exasperated look. Riley is laughing now anyway, pulls his ID out and the officer points angrily to our group on one side, the 'us' side, and Riley stumbles over to join us. O'Neil is talking to one of the other officers, laughing too, animated gestures, explaining.

Sheryl lets go of my shirt and walks over to O'Neil, pushes my boss to the side for a little chat on her own with the police. In the end, the locals wave us all home, threaten, do the same for the brute squad, warn them to stay away from this particular bar in the future. Someone whacks me in the back of the head, Consuela – "Muy macho," she says, teasing voice, rolls her eyes and grins.

"Sólo para ti, chica," I say, grin back, see Christine in the dark hair and brown eyes and all the fun crashes down. Nothing can chase her out of my head, I'm holding on so tight. I don't want anything to chase her away. I can't let that happen.

Sheryl's got me by the sleeve and is pulling me out of the group, away from the red and blue flashing lights, mixing a garish purple against the buildings. I follow along meekly, drunk, knuckles bleeding, turn at the corner into the warm white light on the next street over. It's quiet at this hour.

At some point, I realize it's just me and Sheryl. "Shit, what about Raylan?"

"I'm sure he's fine. He's a big boy. Are you okay?" she asks.

I nod numbly then answer, "Yeah, just..." My arms finish the sentence, aimlessly wave about.

"Drunk."

"Maybe…a little."

"Maybe a lot – I've been pouring, remember? Tim, we're friends, right?" She stops me and looks hard at me. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah."

I don't think she's convinced, but she drops it, keeps walking. We stop another block up and she digs into her purse and pulls out a set of keys and opens a door.

"Where are we?"

"My place. You can have the couch. I think a night away from your friend might do you some good."

"I can handle Raylan. I've had practice." I don't correct her choice of words for Raylan this time, friend. Who am I to say what a friend is or isn't? What the fuck do I know? Maybe my terms and Raylan's terms and everyone's terms for friendship are different. I think about that while we climb up two flights of stairs, down a hall to another locked door.

"Shhh," – a finger to her lips – "Natalie's probably asleep."

I wonder about my friendship with Sheryl, ask myself what the fuck I'm doing here.

* * *

 


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

Sheryl lives in one of those old lofts, a warehouse once. I stand stupidly in the doorway, an intruder, look around and wonder idly if Natalie thinks this place is cool to live in. I do, would if I were fourteen. I think it's cool at thirty-something – can't recall what that something is just now, closer to forty, thirty-eight? I remember to take off my boots when Sheryl waves me in and shuts the door behind me. She turns on a light and walks across the apartment and pours two gigantic glasses of water, holds one out for me across the counter that separates the kitchen from the rest of the room. The living space is pretty big, and it's crammed full of shit, shirts and pants and socks and God knows what else lounging on the couch and chairs, hair brush and other hair things on the coffee table, magazines with covers sporting skinny models in skinnier clothes, colorful scarves, chip bags, soda cans, chocolate wrappers, an iPad in a bright and shiny turquoise case, a blue guitar, makeup, shoes, boots, girls' stuff in the aftermath of an explosion. It's dazzling. I'm a stranger in a strange land.

"Sorry," says Sheryl, nodding at the disaster zone, "I've given up pretending I care."

"Girls in their natural habitat. It's a rare thing for a man to see. I feel privileged, I think." I grin hoping she won't be embarrassed enough to tidy up – that would just make me more uncomfortable.

"Thank you for calling me a girl," she says, teasing, clearly not embarrassed at all. "That's so sweet." She walks over and pushes a corner of the debris off one end of a couch into a heap on the floor and sits down. She looks tired. "There's a nasty old saying – 'maid, mother, hag' – I'm at the hag end so it's nice being lumped in with the girls."

Sheryl is not a hag, not by a long shot. She's had enough happen in her life to make her a hag but that's not how she's turned out. She's got it all together, the kind of woman that you know doesn't need a man in her life but all the guys hang around her anyway, wanting to fix it, whatever it is that's keeping her from smiling much. Sheryl is a hard kind of sad song that makes you want to sing along. Tom Waits said it – "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Or maybe that's just my experiences that I'm filtering her through.

"Maid, mother, hag?"

"Well, actually, I think it's 'crone' – some idea of a woman's life summed up by some ancient asshole, and now the Wiccans are running with it."

The who? I'm fading and too hazy to think well. I fumble for something nice to say. "Wait'll I tell the guys they're all lusting after a crone." She snorts. I don't think she believes me. I don't think she has any idea. "Wiccans sound like a bunch of idiots."

"Neopaganists."

"Neoidiots. Crone might've been true back when..." I set my empty water glass on the coffee table beside the blinged iPad then bundle up the pile of clothes from the chair, "...when women only lived to twenty and lost most of their teeth by sixteen." I search the immediate area for a place to set the bundle, look over at Sheryl for help. "Imagine what the men looked like back then at twenty? What's the male equivalent of a hag?" She points to the floor beside me, so I drop the pile I'm holding, playing along, and drop myself into the seat.

"I can't think of anything they'd call a man," she says. "That's so not fair."

"Cabrón?" I offer some Spanish, but I don't think she's heard me. She's studying me, and I start feeling guilty, though I'm not sure about what. "Did anything get wrecked at the bar?" I ask, trying to remember.

"No. I called in San Diego's other finest as soon as you threw that punch, and anyway, you guys took it outside pretty quickly after it started."

"I wondered why the locals showed up so fast. You know, I appreciate the rescue, but they wouldn't have bothered arresting any of us."

"That's not why I dragged you out of there. I need to clean up the bar tomorrow morning since I had to lock up in a hurry, and you're going to help me because you threw the first punch and started it all." She smiles to soften the criticism. "Actually, like I said before, I decided you needed some space. You looked ready to deck your friend when you walked…limped in. I don't think I've ever seen you so angry. Are you going to tell me what he did to piss you off?"

I reach over and pick up my glass, realize too late that it's still empty. I look back at the sink, glance once at Sheryl. "Plausible deniability. I'm doing you a favor not telling you."

"Right," she says, stands up. "I've got a bag of frozen peas you can thaw on that eye, and I'll get you something for the cuts."

A tap on the shoulder wakes me up a few minutes later. "The human mouth is a very dirty place," she says when I startle and open my eyes, "and the couch is more comfortable." She sets down some bandages and rubbing alcohol, hands me the bag of peas and walks out of the room. I step around the table and sit down on the couch, dig into the supplies for some first aid and do a half-ass job of it. The room is reeling, pink and purple and bright turquoise or teal or whatever the fuck Christine would call that color. Sheryl comes back with a pillow and spreads out a blanket.

"Thanks," I say.

"No problem. 'Night."

I don't fall asleep now that I should. Instead I pour myself another big glass of water and drink it and lay awake, sobering up and thinking about the day, hope it doesn't come back at me down the road. Sheryl comes in the room later, while I'm tracing the water marks on the ceiling. When she sees I'm awake, she perches on the edge of the couch for a second, then takes my hand and takes me back to her bed.

* * *

I wake up later, get my bearings in the dark, realize where I am, but then I'm lost again almost immediately, grief and guilt and I don't know what overwhelming my thoughts. I sit up on the edge of the bed, naked, my head in my hands, and try to clear a path through the emotions flooding any route to action. I want to go home.

"Hey." It's a small voice in the dark. Sheryl.

"Fuck. Sheryl, I'm sorry. I can't do this." I hear my own voice breaking and I swipe at my eyes, frustrated and sad. I could write Tom Waits a fucking gorgeous song right now.

"Hey," she says, and I feel her hand on my back. "It's alright. It's alright, Tim. I can't either. It's just... You know, I feel closer to Josh tonight than I have in...fuck, I don't know how long. I can't stop thinking about him with you here. That's just wrong, I know, but it's good, too. I don't want to stop thinking about him. I'm not ready to. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to. You're thinking about Christine, aren't you?"

I can't do anything but nod in the dark.

"I get it. Friends with benefits," she says.

I hate that phrase. I hate what it means, like you're not willing to share anything more with a person than the good times, can't be bothered digging deeper. "Seriously? What's the benefit to either of us?" I sound mean but she doesn't take it that way.

"We get it," she says. "I know where you're at. You know where I'm at. I like having you here, Tim – it feels nice to have some male company."

She smoothes the sheet where I was laying, I can hear her doing it, and I fall slowly back at the invitation and look up again at the ceiling that I can't see in the dark of this room. Six feet under, six inches over, but Christine is still closer. I don't believe in one true love or broken hearts or anything else as sentimental and illogical, but I think if you give yourself over to someone that maybe it's difficult to collect yourself back up to give again, at least that completely. Lying here it seems that way – like I'm not all here. So what do you do? I don't know. I roll over so I'm facing Sheryl and work my arm underneath her shoulders and she turns her back to me and shuffles closer, in snug. I can feel her breathing, her chest moving up and down. She sighs very softly, just that part of her, what she's collected up to give away again.

"Is this alright?" she says quietly.

"Yeah, it's good."

"What happened today? I have this strange need to mother you, fix it. I can't help it. I guess I'm not in the crone phase yet after all."

"I'm serious – you don't want to know."

"That's what Josh would say when I talked to him in Iraq."

I think about that, think that Sheryl probably understands more than just what it's like to lose someone you love.

"When do you need me out of here?"

"I don't care. Stay if you want to. We have pancakes for breakfast on Saturdays."

"What about Natalie?"

"Oh, don't worry about her. She'll be like, 'Way to go, Mom, getting some action!' or something like that. She'll probably buy me some condoms for my birthday." She shakes her head – I can't see it, but I can feel it, and I imagine the expression on her face when she says, "She's way too mature for her age."

* * *

Natalie is eyeing me from across the table. We're both munching on pancakes. She's not angry or upset or even pissy the way teenagers can get, she's curious, and open about it. She knows me – we've been introduced when she stops by, visiting her mother at work. We all know her, little Natalie with her little friends, walking into the bar early on a Friday or Saturday night to sit at a table and have a soda and some nachos and act all grown up. I've never said more than hi to her until this morning.

"Mom says you're in the military, too, like Dad. Are you going back to Iraq?"

"I was in Afghanistan."

"What's the difference?" She's trying to be mature, smart, jaded at fourteen.

"A couple thousand kilometers."

She gives me the same exasperated face that her mom uses, then points to a tattoo. "What are you, a SEAL or something? And _are_ you going back?"

I understand why she asks. I understand, too, why she would assume SEAL – it's the obvious choice here in San Diego. "Nope, I'm not going back. I left the military. I work for the US Marshals Service now. They _have_ sent marshals to Iraq though, to train the police there, but I've never gone. And by the way, I'm a Ranger, not a SEAL. Thanks for the insult though."

I'm facing the kitchen and Sheryl. She's smiling, so I guess this conversation is okay.

"What's a Ranger?"

Fucking nobody knows. "Like a SEAL only without flippers…and better, 'cause we're Army not Navy. And _we_ don't do movies." I grin and she grins back, looks more like she's her real age, fourteen, for a moment, not her usual fourteen going on thirty.

" _Black Hawk Down,"_ says Sheryl, looking all smug.

"Okay, fine, we did _one_ movie."

We finish breakfast and Natalie volunteers to help at the bar, so the three of us head out to clean up. Sheryl's not working tonight, her partner is, so she doesn't want to leave him a mess to deal with before he opens. When we're done, she asks if I want to have dinner with her and Natalie. I tell her I can't – Raylan is leaving and I'm taking him to the airport. She nods her understanding and looks embarrassed and I want to fix that.

"How about tomorrow night? You free?"

"That'd be nice," she says and kisses me on the cheek when I leave.

Of course, O'Neil has a key to my condo. I forgot about that. Raylan is watching baseball, slouching comfortably on the couch. He's got a split lip and his knuckles look like mine. "Where were you last night?" he says after a sip from his beer.

"Out."

He grins then chuckles then shakes his head. "Intimate relations with a bartender – not something I'd recommend."

There's no point denying anything. I'm already anticipating that phone call from Rachel. It'll happen soon. I should walk over to my calendar and pen it in for next weekend – _phone call from Rachel about Sheryl_. Shit. I poke at Raylan to get even for telling Rachel, though he hasn't yet...yet. I'm just paying it forward. "I pick nice bartenders, Raylan, ones who have their own money and don't need to steal mine."

Raylan looks over at me, knows what I'm referring to. "Good for you, Tim."

I open a beer and sit down on the other end of the couch. Raylan and I finish watching the game together, then we go have some dinner and I drive him to the airport.

"Thanks for your help," he says at the drop off. "That was one hell of a Mexican vacation."

"Yeah, whatever. Just don't fucking bring your shit here again."

He grins and shakes my hand. "Hasta luego, amigo."

"Hey, that's good Spanish, pinche güey."

"See you around."

"Yep, no doubt."

* * *

 


	16. Epilogue

 

* * *

I don't hear from Raylan again after that. I hear about him though, bits that come through the office that I can't help hearing. He pulls another vigilante stunt in Miami, too much like the Tommy Bucks shooting for them to ignore and he's in trouble again. I hear that from Art. I stop listening.

We work hard here, lost another friend in Mexico recently. It pisses me off. I've got friends in the military still and they talk about Mexico and the Middle East and Africa and here, talk about what's wrong, what's changing, what's inevitable. Some of these guys are still messing around inside these countries, moved from Spec Ops to Special Forces, more reconnaissance, more mingling. We talk online, talk about what I'm seeing and dealing with in Mexico, what they're seeing in other places, and we hash out how we'd like to see the problems handled. 'Change is inevitable' is the only thing we conclude from our talks. There's a harsh reality that is the backdrop for my world view and it infects my personal life, too. And there's a harsh reality in my personal life that infects my world view. I realize one drunken evening at the bar that I'm just going through the motions. It's time for a change.

Rachel never has come to visit. It's a bit of a relief because I know she won't like what she sees, even in my relationship with Sheryl. She calls, catches me up on the politics of the Marshals Service. Art calls, brings me back down to earth, American rural earth, and asks every time, first thing out of his mouth, when I'm finally going to transfer out of San Diego. I keep telling him, "When it's time." It's getting to be time. Mike comes to visit twice a year and that's a friendship I don't want to see slip. I can't visit him in Kentucky though. He understands that, I think, and likely finds it easier visiting with me here in San Diego anyway. Here, we can pretend we're still just friends from the range.

There's a thought that creeps in sometimes, usually when I'm drinking, though I remember it first crossing my mind somewhere in Arkansas, well and truly sober, driving away from Kentucky as fast as the road would let me, and the thought is this: maybe it was good, Christine and me, because it didn't get a chance to move on. I try not to follow that line of thinking when it hooks and tugs at me, but sometimes I can't help it. It wasn't always good – I can say that honestly now with an eternity between us – it wasn't always easy. It was there in the distance, I believe, the day when she wouldn't be comfortable anymore with the differences between us. Seattle was a way to leave the differences behind, hope for a life where they didn't matter, a new city, new friends, level playing field, most of the time anyway, except when Kentucky might sneak back for Christmas or vacations or whatever. I think that was what she was hoping, Christine. She knew it was there in the distance, too, that day when I wouldn't be comfortable with the differences either. When I rip it all open now, expose everything, knowing that I'm the only one it's hurting, I can see the crack widening that was there from the start. It was there.

It was Jen who came to tell me. I'll never forget it. I was sitting with another deputy in a car. It was late, early, around two in the morning. We were sipping coffee and watching a house. I spotted it first, the unmarked car pulling in behind us. I tapped my partner and thumbed back and he turned to look and cursed and we both reached for our ID. It happens often enough – marshals staking out some place and the neighbors call it in, two suspicious men in a car. We were expecting a tap at the window and LPD motioning us to get out. Instead, my phone rang – it was Jen. She said someone was coming to take my place tonight, that I was needed elsewhere. I was surprised to see her get out of the car behind us, still holding her phone. I guess she didn't want to startle us. It was her and another deputy, new kid just transferred in. Jen walked over to my side of the vehicle and I got out to see what was up. She looked like she'd just crawled out of bed. She looked upset.

"Tim," she said, her voice husky, "You need to come with me." She'd been crying. I could tell.

"Why? What's wrong?"

* * *

I looked for that bullet, but I couldn't buy one, not even when me and Raylan pulled that fucking messed up stunt down near Ensenada. It's not my time yet, I guess. Like I said, I went at it hard, hoping for somebody to do what I couldn't do, stop me thinking about Christine. I even got a citation for one particularly nasty run-in across the border while I was working that task force, walking through bullets to drag out one of ours who got shot, and when they offered me full-time at Camp Beauregard with the SOG teams, as a reward they said, it seemed like it was due and I took it. I said good-bye to Sheryl, sold the condo, put some of the money in a trust for Natalie and headed to Louisiana. I do my job and I'm good at it. And that's about it. I think I'm actually going to die of old age. It's so fucking not fair.

We're going up to Washington for a big trial starting next week, D.C. not State. I'm going with the team for this one, keep my hand in it, going to be on a rifle and the kids are all teasing me about it, but I still shoot better than any of them and they know it. I just heard that Raylan has fucked up big time, bigger even than I thought he was capable of. Everyone's talking about it so it's impossible not to hear. They ask me what I think since I worked with him. I tell them I don't know what I think – I wasn't there. I didn't see what went down. I don't know how I feel about it, either. I suspect I'll get a call from Rachel and we'll hash it out and she'll tell me how I should feel about it. And I should call Art, let him rant, but I think that can wait until I get back from Washington, give him time to calm down about it.

* * *

 

The End


End file.
